This Could Be Heaven For Everyone (But the Music Would Suck)
by Lyowyn
Summary: Sequel to Who Wants To Live Forever (I Do) Part 2 of The Princes of the Universe series It's the second coming of Christ. Aziraphale and Crowley attempt to do damage control when Jesus comes to Earth to get to know his nephew. It goes about as well as you would expect.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is a sequel to Who Wants To Live Forever (I Do). A lot of it won't make sense, if you don't read that one first.

oOoOoOo

It had been five years since Aziraphale and Crowley had officially shaken off the yokes of their divine and demonic aspects, respectively, and truly become a side of two—at least if you didn't count the several billion human beings on the planet that were as morally grey as they were, and mostly they didn't. They were still trying to figure out exactly what it meant to be neutral agents for humanity.

In the beginning of this new epoch of their existence, they had mostly just done what they had always done, enjoyed the finer things and each other's company, only now they didn't have to try to fit in the odd miracle or temptation, and enjoying each other's company had gotten a lot more interesting, and a bit messier.

Truth be told, they treated the first few years of freedom from Heaven and Hell as a kind of extended honeymoon.

It had been wonderful,… for a while. But, there was a certain kind of self-satisfaction that came from a good job, or a bad one, well done, and once they had unbottled some of the stored sexual tension, they realized that they missed the work.

The problem was that they didn't really know what _the work_ was anymore.

That was, until Crowley practically ran into Dagon on the street, and Aziraphale had spotted Uriel in the crowd at the Chelsea Flower Show, and they'd decided that keeping demonic and angelic presences off of Earth might be a good place to start. This hadn't proved to be overly difficult, since most angels detested Earth as being crude, dirty, and imperfect, and most demons felt generally the same way—just in the opposite direction.

Thwarting the plans of their former colleagues had turned into almost a game. Without the years of experience on Earth that Aziraphale and Crowley had, the rest of them were completely out of their depth.

Beyond that, they each had their own little projects. They didn't worry about good or evil; they just did what they could to make the world a more interesting place to live. Crowley hated electric cars, but he loved plants, and he knew what all those emissions were doing to the ozone layer, so he went over to the Tesla plant in America for a few weeks, and made the electric cars a little less boring. While he was at it, he started a few scandals that got rid of some of the more repugnant reality television shows. Aziraphale put a few words in the right ears to push through certain publishing deals for what he deemed were the right sort of books. Tartan was becoming fashionable again, much to Crowley's dismay. A fire in the kitchen that had burned down his favorite restaurant proved to be caused by faulty wiring and not the result of one of the dishwashers leaving a joint burning in the storage room, as it had at first appeared, and the insurance payout had been enough to rebuild the restaurant even better than before.

Mostly, they just lived.

oOoOoOo

They were walking home through Soho after breakfast, holding hands, on a beautiful spring morning when their comfortable little world was turned upside down.

A bright red Volkswagen Golf with tinted windows, stick-on flame decals, ground effects, and spinning rims, slowed on the street next to them- rap music blasting out of oversized speakers, breaking into their conversation. Crowley stared at it for a moment in horrified disgust, as the window rolled down and the music quieted.

Aziraphale was about to ask if the driver needed directions, when a glass jar was thrown from the open window to shatter at their feet, spraying them both with a watery, brown, sludge of what smelled like, and in fact_was_, raw sewage.

"FAGGOTS!" The driver yelled, and they heard a chorus of laughter from the car's other occupants. With a squeal of tires on pavement, the car swerved back out into the road and sped away.

"Oh, _Hell_ no," Aziraphale said, recovering from the shock of being abruptly and unceremoniously pelted with human waste faster than Crowley did. His face darkened and the wind suddenly picked up, as he turned on the rapidly receding car and vented his rage with a sharp snap of his fingers.

The car swerved and ran into the parking meters on the side of the street a block down.

Crowley, more concerned with the state of their clothes, had banished the mess and broken glass, and was inspecting his shirt to make sure that he hadn't missed any. At the sound of the car crashing, he looked up, and then to Aziraphale. "What did you do to them?"

"Only what they too rightly deserved," Aziraphale ground out. "Bigots!"

"Wrath of a bookseller?"

"Too right."

Crowley bit back a smile at Aziraphale's righteous indignation—chest puffed out as he straightened his jacket.

"Ok, but really, what did you do to them?"

"Sent them to Alabama."

Crowley raised a brow. "America? Why?"

"They may have been wearing dresses," Aziraphale admitted, "and heels."

Crowley smirked and let out a huff of a laugh. He slung an arm over Aziraphale's shoulders and they continued on their way- the sway in Crowley's steps bumping their hips together every few paces. Just before they rounded the corner, he lifted his hand and snapped his own fingers.

The car burst into real flames.

Aziraphale looked back over his shoulder. "That may have been a bit much. There are pedestrians walking by; someone could have been hurt."

"They threw shit at us, angel. A trip to darkest America was too good for them."

"Well," Aziraphale said, "a trip to darkest America, in women's clothing, without passports or residency papers. You know what sort of thing they do to illegal immigrants over there."

Crowley smiled and kissed the curls on the top of Aziraphale's head. "Yes, yours was better, but that car was an eyesore. I was doing _everyone_ a favor. Want to go home and commit acts of sodomy to spite the bigots?"

"Oh, yes, _please_," Aziraphale answered with a slight flush.

oOoOoOo

Unfortunately, they never had the chance to so much as exchange a chaste kiss when they arrived back at the bookshop, because there was an angel waiting for them when they got there.

Six thousand years of self-preservation instincts, caused Aziraphale to instantly drop his hand from Crowley's hip and step away when he saw Gabriel sitting in one of the armchairs in the front of the shop, flipping through a copy of _Atlas Shrugged_ with a disgusted look on his face.

"Ah, Aziraphale," he said, smacking his palms against the arms of the chair a couple times before rising to his feet.

"Gabriel," Aziraphale greeted, and he took a protective step in front of Crowley, as if simply hiding him from view would make the Archangel Gabriel overlook him. "What can I do for you? Back for more _pornography_?"

Gabriel gave him a tight smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I don't think that will be necessary this time."

Crowley mouthed the word 'pornography' to himself and tried to step around Aziraphale, but Aziraphale put an arm out to hold him back.

"I've come with a message from God," Gabriel continued, examining his nails. "She's sending the Christ down for a bit to try to win the brat over. She… _requests_," he said the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth, "that the two of you keep an eye on him."

"_Yeshua_," Crowley said with sudden interest. He did step around Aziraphale then, earning himself a glare. "Yeshua is coming back down to Earth to see Adam?"

"You're talking about _the second coming_," Aziraphale said with more dread than awe.

Gabriel scrunched his face up and tilted his head from side to side. "Not _exactly_. We want to keep this all under wraps. This is strictly a social call, not the rapture. So, just try to keep him in line."

Crowley looked at him skeptically. "Have you ever met him? Keeping his head down was never really his style."

"And what would you know about it, demon?" Gabriel asked.

"Not a demon anymore," Crowley said, "and, apparently a lot more than you."

Gabriel gritted his teeth together, and visibly struggled to maintain his professional demeanor. "Regardless, he will arrive at cock-crow tomorrow, and then he'll be _your_ responsibility. If you choose to exercise your…_free will_, by not acceding to Her wishes, she will exercise Her wrath."

And, in the space of a blink, Gabriel was gone.

"_Cock-crow_," Crowley said in disbelief, "in London?"

"I'm sure it's just a figure of speech," Aziraphale said.

"Or he'll bring us a cockerel as a gift for our hospitality," Crowley said, smirking. He threw himself down on the couch. "_Yeshua_," he repeated in a tone of wonder.

"Yes, I'd forgotten that you knew him," Aziraphale said in a clipped tone that quite clearly said he hadn't. "No doubt you'll have a lot to catch up on."

Crowley completely missed the tone of jealous disapproval. "_Yeah_. Wonder what he's been up to for the last two millennia. I bet he was bored to tears up in Heaven. We'll have to show him a good time."

"Is that what you did last time? _Show him a good time_?"

"Tried to, yeah," Crowley answered, still not picking up on the thinly veiled subtext. "Tried to convince him to leave off thumbing his nose at the Pharisees, and go off with me—live his life. But, no, he just had to bring about the _Kingdom of God_. You were there. You saw how well that went over."

"Indeed," Aziraphale agreed.


	2. Chapter 2

As it so happens, over the last forty years or so, a developing interest in sustainable food and a concern over the chemicals used in commercial farming, meant that London actually played host to a great many fowl. A concerned London citizen, of the type who wore patchouli as perfume and cared deeply about the environment, was allowed to keep hens in their garden for their own personal use as a source of eggs or meat- though the type of people who wanted to do such a outlandish thing, were also typically the type of people who didn't go in for the carnivorous lifestyle. But, hens are not the same as cocks. They clucked a bit in their happy chicken way, but they did not crow at dawn to annoy the neighbors at five in the morning.

However, as it happened, there was one elderly cock of the barnyard variety that made his home in Soho.

His name was Albert.

_Yes, as in Prince Albert. Make of that, what you will._

He was owned by a middle-aged woman named Deborah. She claimed, to anyone who asked, that he was an emotional support rooster- though she had neither the paperwork, nor the medical need to substantiate such a claim. In truth, he was a quite illegal resident of her small rented flat above a bakery.

Albert lived the sedentary lifestyle of a housecock. He rarely rose before nine o'clock, when he went for his morning scratch about the place, had a few pecks at his chicken pellets, and then settled atop a chair in front of the windows to preen himself. He was a purebred Dutch Bantam cock, and his feathers were a beautiful mix of iridescent greens and blacks, with a stunning cascade of orange and yellow hackles over his neck, and bright red waddles and comb. He was quite a fine looking rooster indeed.

He was, being a bantam breed, also about the size of a pigeon. As a result, his crow sounded like someone stepping on a dog's squeaky toy. He was a bit embarrassed about it, really. This was, however, a large part of the reason that he had been able to avoid the detection of his illegal status by human authorities for so long.

oOoOoOo

Aziraphale was woken from a sound sleep at the very arse-crack of dawn by a loud crash. He sat up in bed with a bleary-eyed look around the bedroom. Crowley's spot in the bed beside him was unoccupied. With a groan, he made himself get out of bed, expecting that their holy houseguest had arrived.

Aziraphale had never really slept much prior to his brief stint as a human, but it had turned out to be a hard habit to break. Having Crowley around all the time hadn't helped matters much. Crowley had never really abandoned his reptilian tenancy to curl up and just laze about whenever he found a warm place to lay down, and since Aziraphale was the warm place that Crowley most liked to cuddle into, he often found himself with a lawful of snoring ex-demon, and would usually drift off himself in the middle of a page of whatever he happened to be reading. As a result, he had gotten used to getting his forty winks in of a night, and he found himself resenting the messiah for interrupting his beauty sleep.

But, when he exited the bedroom into the rest of the flat, there was no Christ to be found, just Crowley cursing at a frying pan in the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" Aziraphale asked him.

"Making breakfast," Crowley growled back at him.

"But, you don't know how to cook, dear."

"I've been on this planet for over six thousand years, angel. I can figure out how to fry up some bacon. If, I can just get this blasted stove to turn on." He spun several of the dials, contributing further to the smell of gas that Aziraphale had noticed when he first walked into the kitchen.

"It's the old style of stove, dear," Aziraphale told him. "You have to light it with a match."

Crowley let out a long string of curses and blessings; he'd been relieved to be able to use both interchangeably since becoming neutral—really widened his range of expression. Aziraphale reached past him to turn all the knobs back to off.

"Why haven't we updated these appliances, yet?" Crowley asked. "I have a perfectly good flat full of state-of-the-art appliances. I don't see why we can't just move in there. This place is so nineteen fifties."

"I like my flat," Aziraphale said, "and it's above the bookshop. If we stayed at yours, I'd have to take the tube over every morning, and we haven't updated the kitchen, because neither of us knows how to cook."

"Then why do we _have_ a kitchen? We could get rid of it, and I wouldn't have to keep the plants in the bathroom."

"Well, we need somewhere to keep the table, and the refrigerator."

"When was the last time we used either one of those? It's been years. We eat on the couch like normal people, and you'd have to actually leave some leftovers to put them in the refrigerator."

"Well, you're using the kitchen now, aren't you? And where would I keep my cookbooks if we replaced all the cupboards with shelving for your plants?" Aziraphale asked.

"Oh, I don't know, _downstairs with the others_," Crowley suggested sarcastically. "You could sell them, since neither of us knows how to cook."

"That's what the books are for," Aziraphale explained. "I've been meaning to learn."

"No time like the present, then," Crowley said. "Help me light this thing."

Aziraphale found the matches, and after a few tries, and some slightly singed fingertips, managed to light the burner. "Ouch," he said, jerking his hand back from the flames.

Crowley took his hand and kissed the burns away from his fingertips, sucking each gently between his lips, one at a time.

Aziraphale let out a long breath that was almost a moan, eyes growing heated as he watched, but Crowley pulled away and turned back to the stove. He watched in consternation as Crowley's attention was returned to his cooking experiment, and he pulled a package of bacon out of the supermarket bag on the counter.

"Why are you suddenly cooking breakfast anyway?" Aziraphale asked, as though he didn't already know the answer.

"It's for Yeshua. I thought he might like to have something to eat when he gets here"

Which, or course, didn't explain why they couldn't just eat in a restaurant like they normally did, but Aziraphale ignored that to ask instead, "And you're making bacon for him? Wasn't he a Jew? They don't eat pork."

"His mother was a Jew, and he was raised Jewish, but he's the son of God. He can eat whatever he wants. It took some serious temptation, but one taste of bacon, and he did away with all those ridiculous food restrictions when he started preaching the new religion. As though God should care if you eat meat and dairy in the same meal."

"He must have done, or it wouldn't be in The Book," Aziraphale said.

"We both know that there are plenty of things in _that book_ that didn't happen exactly the way it says they did. It was written by humans. You can call it the _word of God_ all you want; it's still subject to human interpretation, and as long as humans have free will, they can interpret it however they want. We've both seen it enough times that you should know the truth of it by now. Either way, kosher or not, telling them that they could eat bacon converted more Jews to Christianity than a thousand sermons about peace and good will toward men."

Crowley slid a raw slice onto the frying pan and it let out a crackle of boiling grease. "Yeshua loves the stuff."

oOoOoOo

Five hours later, the flat smelled like burnt bacon, and there was still no sign of Jesus.

Crowley made his hundredth trip to the windows and looked down on the street. "Why isn't he here yet?" he asked. "You don't think he's lost do you? Gabriel said he would be here first thing."

Aziraphale looked up from his book. "You know how Heaven is. He's probably still filling out requisition forms for the body."

"Or, he's lost in the city somewhere, already gathering disciples, and performing miracles, and stirring up trouble, and by the time we find him, he'll have gotten himself publicly executed by an angry mob, and Gabriel's going to be back here with a flaming sword to enact the wrath of God."

Aziraphale frowned. "Perhaps we should try to contact Heaven, make sure that there hasn't been some kind of mix-up."

oOoOoOo

A few blocks over, Albert the Emotional Support Rooster had tucked his head beneath one wing and gone back to sleep.

oOoOoOo

Aziraphale hadn't tried to open a line to Heaven since before the revocation of his angelic aspect, and while he had drawn all the appropriate cabalistic symbols, lit the right number of candles, and said the right words, the summoning circle remained inert.

"Why isn't it doing anything?" Aziraphale wondered.

"How should I know," Crowley snapped back. "Maybe the Metatron is on a tea break.

Don't they have an answering service?"

"It's Heaven, not some multinational corporation. The Metatron doesn't have a secretary."

"You have to admit that there are certain aesthetic similarities."

Aziraphale chuckled. "I did once hear Gabriel say the phrase, 'synergistic paradigm shift,' with a straight face." He blew out the candles. "I'm afraid this isn't going to work. Do you want to try it the other way?"

"What do you mean?" Crowley asked.

Aziraphale put his hand together in mock prayer and looked upward with an expression of angelic devotion.

Crowley shuddered. "I'd rather not _run it that far up the flagpole_, just yet."

"Well, if he was lost on Earth, in London, where would he go?" Aziraphale asked. "St. Paul's Cathedral?"

Crowley snorted. "He's spent the last two thousand years in Heaven; the last thing he wants is more pious devotion and hymns."

"What would you want if you hadn't been to Earth in a couple millennia?" Aziraphale asked.

"Food and a fuck," Crowley answered, completely unashamed. "That's why I made the bacon."

Aziraphale doubted that the pile of charred pork sitting on a plate upstairs would be much of an enticement for anyone, regardless of how long it had been since they had eaten, but Crowley had been so _proud_ of himself, so he hadn't had the heart to mention it. He tried not to think about the fucking at all.

"There's a kosher bakery a few blocks over," he suggested instead.

"I'm telling you that you're on the wrong track with this whole kosher thing," Crowley said, but he was already grabbing his jacket. "S'pose we could pick up some matzah to go with the bacon, though."

"Well, that just seems… disrespectful," Aziraphale said as he walked toward the door.

"Yeshua will appreciate the irony."

oOoOoOo

It didn't occur to either one of them, until they had walked the few blocks to Rosenberg's Kosher Bakery, and seen the closed sign on the door, that it was Saturday, and no devout Jew would have their business open on the Sabbath.

"This was a waste of time," Crowley grumbled.

"I don't think he's here," Aziraphale agreed.

"I didn't think he would be, but what about the matzah?" Crowley pounded on the door.

"Don't do that, dear. They're closed. They aren't just going to open because you're hammering away. You have no idea how irritating that is."

"It's for the son of God," Crowley insisted. "They can break Sabbath for the _son of God_."

Crowley pounded on the door again. "I need some unleavened bread for the messiah! Open up!"

"_Crowley_," Aziraphale hissed. "You're being ridiculous. He isn't going to care if he has matzah bread to go with his burnt bacon."

"It isn't _that_ burned."

"That's what it means when it gets all black like that, luv," Aziraphale said.

Crowley scowled at him, and started pounding on the door again.

oOoOoOo

Above the bakery, Albert was suddenly awakened by all of the racket and let out a startled crow.

oOoOoOo

"Did you hear that?" Aziraphale asked, looking up.

"Hear what?" Crowley asked, following Aziraphale's gaze to the window's above the shop.

"What are we looking at?" Jesus of Nazareth asked from behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

When Crowley heard Yeshua behind them, he lit up like the sun and spun around to scoop the Christ up into a tight hug. Aziraphale looked on in horror as they exchanged a brief kiss of the type that was fairly common between friends in the old days, but was not at all a standard form of greeting by today's standards. Crowley pulled back, and held him at arm's length to get a good look at him.

Jesus wore the same body that he had the last time they had seen him, though it bore no signs of the mutilations that he had been subjected to during his crucifixion. He was dressed in modern clothing- a pair of jeans and a black, hooded sweatshirt. With his long hair bound in a messy bun atop his head, and his full beard, he could fit right in with the young people that Aziraphale had noticed roaming the streets in packs in recent years—listening to alternative music, and drinking expensive designer coffee. Aziraphale might have tried to phase out the subculture as one of his projects for the betterment of humanity, they had a pretentious air of feigned intellect that he found distasteful, but they were his biggest step forward in his desire to make tartan fashionable again.

Crowley and Yeshua spoke in rapid-fire Aramaic—Crowley gesturing around wildly. Aziraphale just stood there awkwardly, only understanding one word in ten. He hadn't spoken Aramaic regularly since leaving Jerusalem for Rome. Truthfully, he was surprised that Crowley remembered.

When they finally stopped talking and just stood there grinning at one another, Aziraphale said, "Do you mind if we use the Queen's English? My Aramaic is a bit rusty. I could probably manage Hebrew or Latin, if you prefer."

"English is fine," Jesus said with no hint of an accent. "You must be the angel."

"Former angel," Aziraphale corrected.

"This is Aziraphale," Crowley said.

Aziraphale noticed that Crowley hadn't introduced him as his lover, or partner, or consort. No, it was just 'Aziraphale,' not even _my _Aziraphale.

"Pleased to meet you," Jesus said, extending his arm.

Aziraphale reached his hand out to shake, and fumbled the exchange, when Jesus went to clasp his forearm instead of shaking his hand.

"Actually, we've met," Aziraphale said, "in Capernaum, a year or two before the," he gestured randomly, "…_you know_."

"Ah yes," Yeshua said, "I think I do remember. Didn't I ask you to be one of my apostles?"

Aziraphale flushed. "You did, a bit, yes."

"But you refused," Yeshua continued, "said that you were busy that week."

"Well, yes, I-"

"Couldn't possibly leave at the moment, you said, had a meeting with an Eastern trader to look at some scrolls."

"They were a very lucky find," Aziraphale defended, looking embarrassed, "early Shang Dynasty. You didn't see that sort of thing hit the markets that far west in those days."

"It's all right, angel," Crowley said, eyes sparkling with delight. "I'm sure you didn't miss much. They wrote a few books about it, I think. I'm sure you were able to get the highlights."

Aziraphale bristled. "I was there for the important bits."

"I'm sorry about the matzah," Crowley said to Yeshua then. "Closed for the Sabbath. I guess they didn't get the memo about the schedule change. We'll come back tomorrow, and you can give them the _good word_\- tell them the parable of the man who hasn't eaten in two-thousand years."

"Each man must find his own path to God," Yeshua said. "Besides, I just had matzah with my last meal. What I could really go for is some-"

"Bacon," Crowley broke in excitedly before he could finish. "I made you a whole pig's worth. It's back at the flat."

They both broke into laughter.

"A pig's worth of burnt charcoal," Aziraphale muttered under his breath while he looked on in discomfort. He still thought the whole matzah and bacon thing was rather disrespectful.

"Come on, let's head back," Crowley said, still grinning like he almost never did. He wrapped one arm over each of their shoulders and turned them up the street to make their way back toward the bookshop.

oOoOoOo

Aziraphale looked on in disbelief as Yeshua worked his way steadily through the plate of burnt black bacon with obvious signs of enjoyment.

"So, what have you been up to for the last two thousand years?" Crowley asked.

Yeshua shrugged. "Not a whole lot," he said between bites. "I mostly give comfort to the souls of the recently departed, help them adjust. I just got a television fifty years back, or so. That's been fantastic. I've learned all about what's been going on down here. I get every channel on Earth. It's very informative."

_The son of God talks with his mouth full_, Aziraphale noted._ Apparently he's been watching American sitcoms._

"Television!" Crowley said, eagerly. "That was one of mine. What's your favorite show?"

"I quite like Star Trek," Yeshua said. "If I have time, I'd like to visit San Francisco and see the Star Fleet Academy."

Crowley opened his mouth and closed it again, then tilted his head to the side.

Yeshua cackled, _actually cackled_. "I'm just joshing you, Crawly. I know the difference between drama and news."

Crowley smiled. "It's getting smaller every day."

"He's changed it," Aziraphale interrupted.

"The news?" Yeshua asked.

"His name. It isn't Crawly anymore. It's Crowley, Anthony J. Crowley."

"What does the J. stand for?" Yeshua asked.

"Doesn't matter," Crowley said, turning a bit pink. He adjusted his sunglasses and quickly changed the subject. "How long are you staying on Earth?"

"Dad's only giving me a couple weeks," Yeshua answered. "So, I don't have much time. I'd like to meet Adam today. Does he know that I'm coming?"

"Naw, we just found out last night," Crowley said. "Gabriel came by with a politely worded ultimatum."

Yeshua scrunched his nose, the first time that Aziraphale had seen him without a huge smile plastered all over his stupid face since he had arrived. "Gabriel," he repeated in disgust. "I'm all about loving everyone, but that guy's a tool."

Crowley beamed, and Aziraphale couldn't help a bit of a smile.

Yeshua finished his last piece of bacon, and got up. "I'll just go use the loo, and then we can go surprise the kid."

"Uh," Aziraphale said, uncomfortably, "we don't actually have one. We don't really need it, you see, and Crowley needed somewhere to keep his plants when he moved in. We have a bathtub," he suggested with a wince.

Crowley smirked. "Can you still do that trick with the flowers, Yeshua?"

Yeshua bar Yosef, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, Son of God, grinned like a demon. "I think so. Let's find out."

Crowley and Aziraphale led him to the loo that wasn't a loo. What it was, was a 19th century, porcelain, clawfoot tub, with ornate bronze fittings, that appeared to have been mysteriously deposited in the middle of a jungle.

"Any requests?" Yeshua asked, limbering his manhood with no sense of modesty whatsoever, as they looked on.

Aziraphale gave the holy tackle only a brief glance, before looking away politely.

Crowley nudged him in the ribs, and said, "You'll want to see this," under his breath, before adding in a louder tone to Yeshua. "Can you do one of those orchids that I like? The ones with the frilly white petals?"

Yeshua let loose a steady stream into the dirt at the base of a potted fig tree. Before he had even finished, shoots of green had started emerging from the pot. By the time that he had put himself away and zipped his jeans, there were three perfectly formed orchids, flowering delicate blooms of white with petals that ended in frills like the wings of a bird.

"That's brilliant," Crowley said. "We'll buy some more pots while we're out." He raised his voice to address the plants. "The rest of you are on notice! I had better bloody well have perfection in here, or I'll toss you out and give the messiah a new pot to piss in!"

"What's he doing," Yeshua asked Aziraphale in an undertone.

Aziraphale shook his head. "He's a very particular gardener. I've never understood it."

"Which is why the Dowling's garden was always full of weeds and leaf rot," Crowley said. "You have to be hard on them if you want them to succeed."

oOoOoOo

"This is _your _car?" Yeshua asked when they made it down to the street a bit later for the trip to Oxford. "I noticed it when we walked over before." He circled the Bentley, eyes roaming over the body while he chattered on. "It's beautiful. I've always wanted to ride in one. I've seen every episode of Top Gear. Does it go very fast?"

"Fast as you want," Crowley said, "if you know how to drive it right."

"Will you teach me?" Yeshua asked.

Crowley popped out his elbow and tossed the keys to Yeshua underhand, and he caught them. Crowley quirked a brow at him and smirked. "Would the son of God care for a minor temptation from a speed demon?"

Yeshua's eternal grin stretched a few degrees wider. "Provided it's only a minor temptation, I think that my soul will survive the tarnish."

"A new parable," Crowley suggested. "The story of the man who learned the futility of traffic laws."

Yeshua and Crowley climbed into the front of the Bentley, and Aziraphale found himself relegated to the back seat. In one hundred and five years, Aziraphale had never once had to sit in the back seat of the Bentley. Despite understanding how petty it was, he seethed with insulted indignation.

"Jesus take the wheel," he muttered, and climbed into the car.


	4. Chapter 4

Crowley grimaced as the Bentley lurched forward a few feet and came to an abrupt halt, throwing them all forward, as the engine died.

"You have to," he started when Yeshua turned the key in the ignition again, holding it too long with a whining strain to the starter. "No, not like that, don't-" he was cut off again as the car once more performed its lunging act, desperately trying to achieve first gear, and shuddering to a halt.

"Just STOP," Crowley shouted out desperately.

Yeshua froze, looking flustered.

Crowley let out a calming breath. "Now, just turn the key until the engine turns over, then slowly let loose on the clutch, while you push down on the accelerator, until the transmission catches into gear."

Yeshua concentrated very hard as he did what Crowley had instructed. The gear caught this time, and they made it nearly halfway down the block before the car gave a few more shudders and died again.

"You have to keep your foot on the accelerator once you have it in gear," Crowley gritted out. He rubbed a hand lovingly over the dash. "'S all right, baby. He's trying. He doesn't mean to hurt you," he said softly to the car.

Yeshua tried again, and they were rolling along for a bit, until Crowley could feel the rpms increasing. "Okay, now shift into second," he instructed.

Crowley bared his teeth, as the sound of grinding of gears caused him the kind of severe emotional trauma that manifests as physical pain. "Push the clutch in all the way for fuck's sake! No, SECOND!" The engine gurgled and spluttered. "Clutch in. CLUTCH IN!"

Crowley grabbed the gear stick roughly over Yeshua's hand and pushed it into second gear. They had been losing speed rapidly, and when Yeshua released the clutch, the Bentley once more lurched, died, and threw Crowley hard against the dash, as if in rebuke.

"Perhaps, you should just drive dear," came Aziraphale's voice, placating, from the backseat.

This had all gone much the same way when he had tried to teach the angel to drive, some ninety years ago now, and Aziraphale, a flustered ball of nerves over the whole endeavor, had said the exact same thing then.

Crowley breathed out again, willing himself to relax. "No. _No_. It will be fine. It just takes a bit of practice to get the knack of it. Now Yeshua, listen closely, I'll explain again."

"It's all this shifting," Yeshua said. "There's no reason for it to be so complicated." He waved a hand over the gear stick, and it disappeared. "There," he said. "An automatic will be much easier."

Crowley waved his hand through the empty space where his gear stick had been a moment before, in abject horror. "You can't," he spluttered. "What did… What have you done?"

"Oh relax," Yeshua said. "This will be better. None of that messing about with shifting and clutches to slow you down."

"_Better_?" Crowley asked in disbelief. "_Better?_" He demanded. "_Slow_ me down?" He let out a whimper, as Yeshua blithely missed the point.

"You don't have to thank me," Yeshua said. "It's just a small miracle between friends."

"Damnation," Crowley argued. "Blessed are the considerate; who don't go blasted mucking about, making alterations to perfection, for they shall inherit another fucking sunrise."

oOoOoOo

"Um, Jesus? _I mean_, Yeshua?" Aziraphale asked.

"Yes?"

"I don't suppose you have any idea what would happen to us if we were discorporated now?" Aziraphale's knuckles were white where he had his hands scrunched into the fabric of the legs of his pants. "I mean, since, _strictly speaking_, we don't belong to Heaven or Hell? Do you suppose your Father would issue us new bodies?"

"Dunno," Yeshua said, swerving around a garbage skip and between a pair of coupes, at a speed even Crowley didn't usually manage. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason,"Aziraphale said in a strangled choke.

"How does the music thing work?" Yeshua asked, hitting buttons on the dash.

"No, not like that," Crowley muttered.

"WATCH OUT!" Aziraphale yelled, as they sped past a cyclist close enough to brush the man's leg. Aziraphale spun in his seat to look out the back window. The cyclist had swerved off the road directly into a pedestrian, both tumbled over, but appeared relatively unharmed. "_Please_, slow down. You're going to kill someone."

"Oops," Yeshua said, and he did slow down. He was still breaking the speed limit by a considerable amount, but at least it no longer felt as though they were about to break the sound barrier.

"Here," Crowley said, hitting a button on the stereo. A blast of noise from the speakers left Aziraphale's ears ringing before he turned the volume down.

_Instant Karma's gonna get you_

_Gonna knock you right on the head_

_You better get yourself together_

_Pretty soon you're gonna be dead_

Crowley froze, his hand still hovering by the stereo. "What's _that_?"

"What's what?" Yeshua asked.

"The_ music_," Crowley demanded.

"Oh," Yeshua answered. "It's Instant Karma. John Lennon."

"Yes," Crowley agreed, in a quiet, measured tone, between gritted teeth. "_Yes, _I can hear that. What's it doing playing in my car?"

Yeshua shrugged. "It's my favorite."

"No," Crowley said firmly. "Nonononono. The Bentley doesn't play _John Lennon. _It plays Queen, and more Queen, Freddie or Brian's solo albums, and then more _Queen_. On a good day, I can get T-Rex, Velvet Underground, a few tracks of Bowie, but then it's more _Queen! _The Bentley does _not_ play John Lennon."

"Oh," Yeshua said. "Is it broken or something?"

Crowley made a bunch of inarticulate noises. "My car is _not_ broken. It just has strong preferences. You can't just superimpose your own taste on it. It's not _right_." He folded his arms over his chest. "Tell him, Aziraphale."

"It's all bebop to me," Aziraphale said, and Crowley made more noises.

Aziraphale smirked.

It was only fair that Crowley should finally be on the wrong end of some messiah induced jealousy- even if his proprietary instincts were directed toward the Bentley rather than Aziraphale.

_Instant Karma's gonna get you_

_Gonna knock you off your feet_

oOoOoOo

When they arrived in Oxfordshire, Crowley snatched the keys out of Yeshua's hand and clasped them to his chest. "Never again," he said. "_Jesus Christ. _Who taught you manners?"

"My mother," Yeshua said.

"Yeah, _well_. The Virgin Mary has some bloody explaining to do then."

oOoOoOo

Adam was at one of the work tables in the paleontology lab, re-sorting some specimens that the undergrads had been using for one of their lab assignments, when the door to the lab burst open and Crowley swaggered in.

"Whatever it is, NO," Adam said, pulling a partial specimen of a trilobite out of a tray of coprolite and putting it where it belonged.

"I have someone for you to meet," Crowley said, ignoring him.

Adam wasn't quite sure who he was expecting when he looked up, but it was just Aziraphale and some hipster guy.

"I'm not getting involved in whatever," Adam gestured between the three of them, "_this_ is."

"It's a family reunion. Yeshua, meet Adam. Adam, Yeshua," Crowley said.

The hipster came forward and extended his hand.

"Who?" Adam asked, starting to extend his own hand in reflex.

"Yeshua bar Yoseph of Nazareth," Crowley explained. "The Messiah. Son of God."

"_Jesus Christ_," Aziraphale said, and Adam wasn't sure if it was a curse, or if Aziraphale thought the son of God part hadn't been clear enough.

Adam jerked his hand back before they could touch. "What the fuck?"

"Language," Aziraphale reprimanded.

"Hypocrite," Crowley accused.

"It's good to finally meet you," Yeshua said, his hand still extended to shake.

"Uh," Adam said, staring at the hand, "likewise, definitely. It's just… if you're the Christ and I'm the Antichrist, and we touch… won't we sort of… _cancel each other out_? Like matter and antimatter colliding?"

Yeshua took on a thoughtful expression and started to pull his hand back, and then he reached out and patted the top of Adam's head.

"Apparently not," he said, smiling.

Adam scowled. "You'd feel pretty stupid right now if we had both ceased to exist." He looked to Crowley. "If he's here, then I'm guessing there's something is going on."

Crowley shrugged.

"Gabriel said that God wanted the two of you to meet."

"I'm supposed to try to convince you to do your job," Yeshua said.

"My job being to bring about Armageddon?"

Yeshua waved a hand in the air. "Naw, just take your place beside Lucifer in the fight between Heaven and Hell. Hey! What are these?" He asked, picking up one of the coprolites.

"Fossilized poop," Adam answered.

Yeshua dropped the coprolite and wiped his hand on his hoodie.

"Those are about 200 million years old," Adam said, "they're mostly calcium phosphate. They're as sanitary as any rock you would pick up in the road."

"The world is only six thousand years old," Yeshua said, still wiping his hand.

"Tell that to the dinosaurs," Adam said.

"Dinosaurs aren't real. They're like Vulcans and Timelords. It's just Science Fiction. I know it looks real, but they're just puppets. Anima… animate… "

"Animatronic," Adam said, "but I have about a hundred kilos of fossilized shit to sort through, that says differently."

"That's just Dad's little joke," Yeshua dismissed.

Adam gave Yeshua a hard look. "There's evidence in the fossil record of five world-wide mass extinction events. Maybe it's a really elaborate prank by a celestial being with too much time on Her hands, or maybe Granny isn't telling you everything, and She had a few false starts before The Garden of Eden."

Yeshua frowned.

Adam huffed out a sigh, and shook his head in frustration. "Do you want to see a dinosaur?"

oOoOoOo

"This is Eustreptospondylus oxonienis," Adam said, standing before the four and a half meter long skeleton. "It was discovered, just a few miles from this spot, in1871, and it lived in Oxfordshire 155 million years ago."

"Ooh," Yeshua said, not looking. "What are those ones?"

"That's a Tyrannosaurus and an Iguanadon," Adam said, following Yeshua's gaze over to the two massive skeletons on display, "but those ones aren't real. They're replicas made from casts of the actual fossils. This one is real though. These are the actual, fossilized, remains of an real animal that might have actually stood on this very spot, a hundred and…_.I've lost them_." Adam sighed as he followed after Yeshua and his godfathers to the much more visually impressive replicas.

"I told you they weren't real," Yeshua was telling Crowley. "Look at those teeth though."

"Have you been listening to a word I've been saying?" Adam asked. "They _were _real. A mass extinction, 65 million years ago, killed them all off, but they _were _real. We've discovered over seven hundred different species of dinosauria so far; that's not counting all of the other forms of life from the same period. And that's just one epoch of life on Earth. We have specimens in the fossil record from 3.5 billion years ago, and evidence of biodiversity arising between each of the five mass extinctions. I'm not going to argue with you over the existence of God. I've met Her. I know that She exists. But what could possibly be the point of _fabricating _all of _this_?" He gestured around the Oxford Museum of Natural History's lobby.

"It's a joke," Yeshua said. "Raphael came up with it. He thought it would be funny to keep the humans guessing. Dad thinks it's hilarious."

Adam glared at him.

"Oh look, there's a gift shop," Crowley said suddenly. "Come on, angel. I'll buy you a souvenir." He grabbed Aziraphale by the arm and pulled him away from Adam and Yeshua.

"What?" Aziraphale asked, as he was pulled along. "Why?"

"They'll have knick-knacks. You like knick-knacks."

"Well, yes," Aziraphale said. "I suppose so, but what about Adam and Yeshua?"

"It'll be good for them. Let them get to know each other without us hovering over their shoulders."

"This is about the dinosaur thing isn't it?" Aziraphale asked. "You don't want Adam to find out that-"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."


	5. Chapter 5

Adam gave up on trying to put the exhibits into any kind of historical or scientific context after about fifteen minutes, and just let Yeshua lead them around to look at whatever happened to catch his interest.

"Where do you think Crowley and Aziraphale have gotten off to?" Adam asked. The museum was a large enough place, and Adam could just imagine the kind of trouble those two could be stirring up, left unsupervised.

"I don't know Aziraphale very well. He doesn't talk very much. He's… aloof," Yeshua said. "But, I wouldn't worry. Crowley can take care of himself."

Adam suspected that Yeshua didn't know either one of them _at all_. "Crowley cannot take care of himself. Neither one of them can. There's barely an ounce of common sense between the two of them. On a good day, Crowley can take care of Aziraphale, and Aziraphale can take care of Crowley. On a bad day, they end up incarcerated, or find inappropriate uses for… _various household products_."

"I don't understand."

Adam shook his head. "Trust me, you don't want to. Point is, they can't be trusted not to do something insane and ridiculous. We should find them and make sure that Crowley hasn't reanimated a dinosaur to eat someone for being rude to Aziraphale, or wose."

"You love them a great deal, don't you?"

Adam looked away across the room. "They're a pain in the arse, but they keep things interesting."

"That, I do understand," Yeshua said. "I spent many years travelling the world with Crowley."

Adam looked back up at that. "You did? With _Crowley_? But you're… well, _you._ How did you get away with chumming around with a demon?"

"How did you get away with not starting Armageddon?" Yeshua asked, his smile turning into a wry quirk of his lips. "I'm not an angel, and you aren't a demon. We have free will. We _can _make our own choices."

"Except," Adam said. "I made my choice. I don't want to have anything to do with Hell. So, She sent you down here to harass me into compliance."

"I'm not here to harass you," Yeshua argued, "and I didn't say that your choices were without consequence, or that they were infinite. Crowley offered to show me the world, because he thought that I should know what I would be giving up, and I found out what I was sacrificing myself for. That's how I was able to find peace with my purpose. You need to find that for yourself."

Adam snorted. "That's easy for you to say. Your destiny was to preach love and forgiveness, and die for the sins of mankind. My destiny was to bring about the end of the world in a bloody war between Heaven and Hell, and now apparently it's to rule over perdition as Lucifer's right hand man."

"You think that what I did was _easy_?"

"No," Adam admitted. "I guess not, but at least what you did was helping people. I'm just meant to destroy.

"So you think that ruling Hell won't help people?" Yeshua asked.

"Uh, no. Eternal torment and damnation is kind of the opposite of helping people."

"Is it, though?"

"Yes."

"They had free will. They were allowed to make their own choices, and they have to deal with the consequences. I'll let you in on a little secret. The Ineffable Plan isn't really that ineffable. Hell serves a purpose. Your father needed to be cast out of Heaven in order to fulfill that purpose. Without the threat of eternal damnation, what is to stop people from committing any number of atrocities?"

"What about common human decency?" Adam asked. "Do you have any idea how many people don't believe in Heaven and Hell these days? Those people don't run around raping and murdering people just because they don't believe in divine retribution. They're just regular people with the normal amounts of kindness and cruelty. There are plenty of devout Christians who have committed acts that the most dedicated atheist would never dream of. God's plan might not be ineffable, but that doesn't mean that it isn't _stupid_."

Yeshua sighed. "In my time, things were simpler. Everyone believed."

"Yeah, but people also died of the plague, and you know… nailed people to wooden crosses."

"True," Yeshua allowed. "We didn't have cars or television either."

"No phone, no lights, no motor cars," Adam sang. "Not a single luxury. Like Yeshua of Nazareth, it's primitive as can be."

"Yes," Yeshua laughed. "Just like Gilligan's Island, apart from the coconuts."

"No palm trees in Israel?" Adam asked. "What's all that business with Palm Sunday about then? I thought they threw them at you the last time you came into Jerusalem."

"We had palms, just not coconuts." 

"Probably wouldn't have wanted them lobbing coconuts at you anyway," Adam said.

They had wandered their way back into the lobby, and Adam pointed across to where Aziraphale and Crowley were coming out of the gift shop. Aziraphale had a bag over one arm and a little plush T-Rex in his hand—a bright, happy smile lit his face. Crowley looked pleased with himself.

"They're going to be insufferable now," Adam said.

"Aziraphale looks quite a bit happier," Yeshua observed.

"That's what I mean. You can queue the sappy romance music now."

"Romance?" Yeshua frowned. "But,… he's an angel."

"Was an angel," Adam corrected.

"Wait. Are you saying that they…" Yeshua trailed off.

"You're staying at their place while you're here, aren't you?"

"Yes," Yeshua answered, still too shocked by this new revelation to understand how it would impact him.

"I'll get you some earplugs," Adam offered.

"Look at what Crowley bought me," Aziraphale called excitedly when they were still several paces away, holding up the plushie. "Isn't it cute? Look at its little arms."

"Yeah," Crowley said, draping himself sinuously over Aziraphale's shoulder. "Look at those cute little arms. Not exactly what I'd call _intelligent_ design. More like a practical joke."

Adam clenched his jaw.

The whole paleontology thing had started out as a lark, a way to prove to his father just how disinterested he was in anything and everything to do with Heaven, Hell, Creationism, and everyone personally involved. But, the more he'd learned, the more he had turned a childish interest in dinosaurs into a true passion for the prehistoric world.

If he ever got another chance to have a little heart-to-heart with God, he had a lot of questions.

oOoOoOo

It may have been the weekend for most of the world, but Adam was a grad student, and he didn't actually have the luxury of taking a whole day off, at least not when he had about a million fossils to sort through for his advising professor before tomorrow morning. So, he'd promised to come up to London for a few hours tomorrow afternoon, and done his best to get rid of them all so that he could get back to work. He'd had limited success.

"One little miracle, and we could have them sorted for you," Aziraphale offered.

"No." Adam placed himself between the supernatural beings and the fossils. "No one who says that they don't believe in dinosaurs is allowed to perform miracles on the dino shit."

"Can't you do it?" Crowley asked. "You're granted power beyond mortal ken, and this is how you want to spend your time? Sorting through fake poop rocks by hand?"

"Yes," Adam said tersely. "As a matter of fact, it is."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Come on, Adam. Yeshua is only here for a couple weeks. Let's show him around a bit."

"I'm not putting everything in my life on hold just because, after twenty-three years, yet another celestial family member suddenly feels like making an effort."

Crowley and Aziraphale both made the same expression, a shuffling kind of amused embarrassment, which Adam misread as guilt.

"What?" Adam asked, dreading the answer.

Crowley snickered, and Aziraphale elbowed him.

"_Context_, my dear," Aziraphale said, fondly.

Adam rubbed a hand over his face. "What is it? Do I even want to know?"

"_Making an effort_," Crowley said, smirking. "That's what we call it when…" He made a complicated gesture in the vicinity of his crotch, which somehow managed to clearly convey exactly what he meant.

"NO," Adam said. "The answer to that question was no. When I ask, 'do I even want to know,' and the answer has anything to do with genitalia, then it's always, _always, _no. Just say, 'No, Adam, you _don't_ want to know,' and I can go on living in blissful ignorance—not knowing every _single_ detail of your _bloody _sex life."

"You don't need to be such a prude," Crowley muttered.

"I'm not a prude. There's a difference between…. No. No. I'm not explaining this again. You only say things like that because you want to get a rise out of me," Crowley snickered, "and I'm _not_ playing along this time. Yeshua," he turned to his uncle, "it was very nice meeting you, but you all need to leave now. I will see you tomorrow."

oOoOoOo

It has been said that there is no rest for the wicked, but Lucifer Morningstar, unlike his son, _did_ take the weekend off. He hadn't led a revolution against Heaven just to serve in Hell without ever taking a break. He had a variety of sins to choose from, and he was currently enjoying the hell out of sloth and gluttony. With any luck, he might manage to indulge in a bit of lust before the night was over.

He was plying Azazel with his favorite pomegranate liqueur to that end, and they were ensconced comfortably on a scattered bed of cushions in the arboretum of the satanic residence, soft music and the rustle of leaves providing just the right mood for the evening.

Azazel was laughing, tossing his silver hair, and Lucifer was just leaning in to whisper wicked nothings into the shell of his ear, when the pervasive smell of excrement and the sound of the glass door to the conservatory, heralded an unwanted interruption.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, my lord," Hastur started.

Lucifer twisted one silver curl of Azazel's hair around his finger, watching how it caught the candlelight. "Then don't. Can't you see that I'm busy?"

"Yes, my lord, but it's about Adam."

Lucifer was on his feet in an instant, and grabbed Hastur by the front of his shirt.

"What about Adam?" he demanded.

Hastur cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Our agents have reported that he's been seen in the company of the Christ. Our back channels confirm that Jesus has been dispatched to Earth."

"WHAT?" Lucifer threw Hastur to the floor and loomed over him. "Why?"

"We don't know, my lord," Hastur whimpered. "The _fairies_ were seen with them as well."

Azazel smirked, and Lucifer looked at his mouth with longing and disappointment.

He sighed. "I'm sending you up, Azazel. Get to the bottom of this. If He means to sway _my son_ to His side, then I will send you to persuade His son over to ours. It seems clear now why Crowley failed in his temptation." Lucifer drew Azazel up to his feet and ran a hand over that perfect jaw, brushing fingers over soft lips. "You, my lovely one, will not be so easy to refuse."


	6. Chapter 6

"Oh, that's rubbish," Crowley said, spitting his wine back into his glass.

"I'm a bit out of practice," Yeshua said. "Let me give it another try." He reached for another water pitcher.

"This isn't so bad," Aziraphale said, sipping at his own glass of water come wine. "It would have been quite passable a couple of millennia ago. I'm not sure that it's so much that you're out of practice, as out of experience. Viticulture has come a long way in the last two thousand years."

They had finished off a couple of bottles that Aziraphale had lying around, and with Crowley draped over him on the couch in the backroom of the bookshop, dinner from the Ritz still making him comfortably full, and a nice hazy warmth from the wine, Aziraphale was feeling a lot friendlier toward Yeshua than he had when the messiah had first arrived.

"Show me what you mean," Yeshua asked. Aziraphale waved a hand at the decanter of water and it turned a mellow yellow color.

Crowley dumped Yeshua's red back into the other pitcher and poured them each a new glass. He tasted his and smiled lazily. "This is the apricot stuff that we had a few years back, in…. Where was it again?"

"Napa, dear," Aziraphale answered.

"Ah yes," Crowley agreed. "That weekend in that nice villa."

Aziraphale hummed. "He tried surfing on that trip," he told Yeshua. "Most ridiculous thing I've ever seen."

"You should see him try to ride a camel," Yeshua countered.

"_Camels_," Crowley scoffed with pure venom. "You think horses are bad, angel. I tell you. No creature on Earth has ever been created that's as loathsome as the camel. This Bactrian number that I had back then," Crowley let out a hiss. "That was the most evil beast of burden that ever trod upon God's green… well, _barren and inhospitable _desert. No punishment designed by demon or man is bad enough for what that camel deserves. _I mean_. Your Bactrian camel has two humps right. So I think," Crowley hiccuped. "I think cor' that'll be loads more comfortable to ride. Practically built for riding. Just nestle your saddle right there between the humps and settle in. _No. _Every time the damn thing takes a step, those humps go wobbling around, jostling you about. It's impossible to look cool, galumphing about on a camel. They're all knees, and hair, and stink, and _gelatinous protuberances. _Talk about intelligent design. I rather think that God was having an off-day when He thought up that one."

He took another gulp of wine. "And this camel, _this_ camel, was the stinkiest, hairiest, most protuberant of the lot. The bloody-minded thing bit me whenever it got the chance. You'd think it was safely away, doing whatever camels do when they aren't defecating massive piles of toxic sludge all over the place. You'd turn your back for an instant, and WHAM, right in the arse! I had bruises for months, and then I'd have to sit on the blasted thing again and be jostled around for hours in the cloud of stink emanating from the scratchy, bedraggled, fucking wool. And, it _lingers_, for _days_. You can't get the smell out."

Crowley paused long enough for a breath and another drink of wine. "_Bloody camels_. We should have Adam make a special circle of Hell and just fill it to the brim with camels. Make all the homophobic whankers run about for eternity, hip deep in camel dung, having their arses mutilated by dirty, gelatinous, wool-bags… with big teeth."

Crowley refilled his now empty glass. "Blasted thing loved Yeshua, of course."

"I quite liked that camel," Yeshua agreed. "It's very boring just plodding through the desert. Watching you go into fits of paroxysm every time it bit you or didn't do what you told it was very entertaining."

Crowley glared at him.

Aziraphale, quite accustomed by now to Crowley's drunken expounding on all God's creatures great and small, filed camels under _animals not to mention in casual conversation_, and was about to ask Yeshua what he thought of the wine, when Crowley went off again.

"That whole, sheep go to Heaven, goats go to Hell, thing is just because they haven't devised a place terrible enough to send the camels yet. If there was one animal that Noah should have kicked off that bloody great boat of his, it was the camels."

Aziraphale opened his mouth to try again, but Crowley just bowled on. "They spit, you know, and it isn't just normal spit. It's great gobs of nasty, green, half-digested, _putrescence_."

Aziraphale scrunched his face. "Are you quite finished now?" he asked.

"Yeah, s'pose," Crowley grumbled. "Just really hate camels."

"Yes," Aziraphale agreed. "You've made that quite abundantly clear. Would you like to expound further on the relative merits of, oh, I don't know… _hammerhead sharks_, or can me move onto another topic?"

Crowley waved a hand dismissively through the air, telling Aziraphale to get on with it then.

"How is the wine?" Aziraphale asked Yeshua.

Yeshua tried it and nodded. "Yeah, I think you're right. We never had anything like this the last time I was here." He took another sip. "Can I ask you two a personal question?"

"Hmm?" Crowley asked.

"Were you two together,... like this, I mean," he gestured between the two of them, "the last time that I was on Earth."

"Oh, no," Aziraphale said, sounding scandalized. "Not like this. I was an _angel_."

Yeshua nodded, appearing somewhat relieved.

Crowley scoffed, "Yeah, an oblivious angel. He stretched back against Aziraphale and gave a lazy smirk. "Back then, we had _an Arrangement_."

"We most certainly did not," Aziraphale protested. "We barely even ran into each other back then. And, anyway, you needn't make it sound so tawdry."

Crowley rolled his eyes and looked to Yeshua. "There I am, four thousand and _whatever_ before you came around. Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve. And there's this angel there. S'posed to be keeping an eye on things. S'posed to be on apple tree duty. Instead he's poncing about, sampling the fruit, th' non-forbidden kind anyway, and picking out baby names."

"I was not _poncing_," Aziraphale protested.

"Angel, you couldn't not-ponce if the world depended on it," Crowley said. "Anyway, here's this angel. Most angelic angel you ever saw- all blissfully devoted to his purpose, completely in love with God's creation, and at the same time, total rubbish at his job. So, I slither my way in, take care of business. Eve eats the apple, shares the knowledge of good and evil with lover boy, and BOOM, they're out of the garden."

Aziraphale tisked, and opened his mouth to protest Crowley's telling of events again, but Crowley put a hand over his face to keep him from talking.

"So there I am, just slithering about, wondering what I'm s'posed to do next, and I see Angelic McAngelface of the Eastern Gate up on the wall, looking like someone kicked his puppy."

"Washnt," Aziraphale said behind Crowley's hand. "Wash jush fshleenith penshivth."

"So, I decide to pop up and say hello. Maybe rub it in a bit. Tell him that if he'd been doing his job instead of flouncing around tasting all the grapes and olives, none of this would have happened."

"A donth flounth."

"Only, when I get up there, he just looks _so sad_. So instead, I strike up a conversation. Just on the off chance, you know, and instead of telling me to bigger off back to Hell, this beautiful idiot actually starts talking to me. Tells me he gave his holy blade to the humans. And, I think, _oh boy,_ _this one_ will be downstairs soon as God can say, _'I cast you out_,' and he wouldn't look good in black, but having him around downstairs might make things more interesting. Then it's thundering and I'm thinking, here we go. Here comes the divine waterworks. Bit of holy water to scour my demonic hide. And this angel just throws up a wing like he's sharing his umbrella at the bus stop. And," Crowley looks with loving amazement into Aziraphale's eyes, "I just figured, I already fell once, how much worse could it get?"

Crowley removed his hand and stretched up to replace it with a soft kiss.

"Course," he continued. "Took him six thousand years to realize it. Hardest temptation I've ever managed. Talk about playing the long-game."

"It didn't take me as long as all that to realize what you were up to," Aziraphale said. "I just… I was an _angel_. There was a lot at stake. I guess it took thwarting Armageddon for me to see that what I was giving up wasn't all that great to begin with, and that there was more for me on Earth than was dreamt of in Heaven and Hell."

Yeshua smiled at them. "So, it all worked out in the end. I always thought that humanity deserved its own champions. It's kind of incredible, all the things that had to happen for that to come about. It's almost as though that was the plan all along."

"Ineffable," Aziraphale agreed.

"Don't either of you start on _that_," Crowley warned, lurching upward to scoop up two large tomes from the table and wave them at Yeshua and Aziraphale threateningly.

"Oh, _no_, not the books, Crowley," Aziraphale begged, jumping up to rescue them.

oOoOoOo

A couple hours and a few bottles later, Aziraphale and Crowley were completely sober, and Yeshua was having a hard time making it up the stairs. It seemed that, with all his miracles, he had never learned the knack of simply willing the alcohol out of his bloodstream, and he was far too drunk now for Crowley or Aziraphale to try to explain it to him.

Yeshua clung to Crowley as he stumbled his way upward, Aziraphale bringing up the rear in case the messiah lost his balance and brought Crowley down with him for the ride.

He said something in Aramaic.

"What was that?" Aziraphale asked.

"He said that the Kingdom of God is like a staircase, if you're too drunk to walk, it's a nice place to lay your head."

"What does that mean?"

"Means if we don't get him upstairs soon, we're going to be carrying him," Crowley said. "Come on Yeshua, almost there now."

Yeshua gurgled.

"I don't suppose he vomits roses?" Aziraphale asked.

"It's more like camel spit."

"Ah," Aziraphale said. "Perhaps you should just carry him then."

"You carry him, if it's so easy. He weighs a ton."

"There's no need for either of us to," Aziraphale said, and snapped his fingers.

Jesus disappeared, and Crowley stumbled down a step into Aziraphale, at the sudden loss of his burden. Aziraphale caught him and held him steady until he found his feet.

"You'd better not have accidentally sent him to Alabama," Crowley said, hurrying up the stairs, and Aziraphale followed.

They found Yeshua in the bathroom, vomiting, what was definitely not roses, into the bathtub. He let out a moan between bouts, and Crowley smoothed the hair that had fallen loose out of his bun away from his face, and rubbed his back, while Aziraphale banished the mess.

"Do you think we should bring him to hospital," Aziraphale asked. "What if he has alcohol poisoning or something?"

"Can't we just heal him? You have plenty of practice with that. It's one of your better miracles."

Aziraphale shook his head. "We can't. He's the Son. We don't have any power over him. Do you really think that I didn't try to take away his pain when the Romans were busy mutilating him? Didn't you?"

"Of course I bloody well did. I just assumed that it didn't work because I was a demon. You know that I wasn't any great shakes with the bigger miracles."

Yeshua vomited again.

"He'll be fine," Crowley said. "We just need to let him get it out of his system the human way."

oOoOoOo

Azazel hovered over the bookshop. He'd been lurking around the place for hours, hoping for an opportunity to get the Christ alone for some demonic temptation, but no one had left since they had all arrived together shortly after nightfall.

He picked at one of his glistening, black nails. He didn't understand why Lucifer had sent _him_. Surely Hastur or Dagon had more experience on Earth than he did. Of course, they also had an equally high rate of failure. Crowley had been the only one to ever have any true success in understanding these humans, and look where that had gotten him.

It certainly didn't look as though he would be getting anywhere with his temptation of Christ tonight, and the evening could have been spent so much more enjoyably. Azazel ran a hand through his hair to scratch around one curved horn, and rose up to land on the roof.

He should find Adam and see if the Antichrist had a better handle on what Heaven was planning, but the boy had been unpredictable so far. It was clear that he wasn't on Hell's side, but Azazel got the impression that he wasn't on the side of the angels either. It was possible that he could be persuaded that having a heavenly presence on Earth wasn't in his best interests.

At the very least, it would kill the hours until dawn when Azazel might have a chance of getting up close and personal with Jesus.

oOoOoOo

Crowley had sent Aziraphale to bed hours ago, and had been sitting on the bathroom floor, listening to Yeshua mumble nonsensical similes and parables in Aramaic between bouts of vomiting, for what seemed an eternity.

Finally, the messiah had fallen quiet, and stopped expelling unpleasant bodily fluids, and Crowley crawled over to where he was sprawled across the lip of the tub, sleeping the sleep of the thoroughly regretful.

Crowley rubbed his back. "Hey, Yeshua. Come on, and wake up. Let's get you to the couch, and you can sleep it off."

Yeshua started awake, clinging onto Crowley, begging him in Aramaic not to forsake him, and mumbling about centurions and God's forgiveness.

"Hey, _hey_," Crowley said, hugging him close. His throat went harsh, and he felt as though his guts had turned to stone. "It's all right. You're okay now. You're _safe_. I haven't forsaken you. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

Yeshua just held onto him and sobbed, begging him not to go.

"Hey, okay, it's okay. You come sleep with us tonight, all right? _It's okay_."

Crowley whispered soothing words in a litany, as he hauled Yeshua to his feet and helped him down the hall to the bedroom.

As he eased the door open, Aziraphale turned in the bed to look at him, blearily. "_Crowley_? What's going on?"

"Move over, angel. Make room for Jesus."


	7. Chapter 7

It was nearly 2 a.m. when Adam had finally finished sorting through the last of the endless trays of fossil specimens, categorizing each and taking down notations before storing them away for the next batch of undergraduates to mess them all up again.

He was walking across campus to his car, daydreaming over how nice it would be to have an ordinary life without the complications brought about by unexpected visitations by biblical figures who dismissed your academic pursuits as a practical joke, or made sappy cow-eyes at each other, while slinging about innuendo that wasn't that many steps removed from actual pornography, and expected you not to understand what they were talking about.

The quiet of the deserted campus was broken by the flutter of wings, a dark shadow against the blackened sky, and then Azazel made a _God-damned_ super hero landing in front of him on the grass- wings stretched out in a exaggerated pose on either side, and long mane of silver curls blown out in a non-existent wind.

Adam sighed.

"What are you doing here, Azazel?" he asked.

He straightened dramatically, folding his wings away out of existence.

"Your father is concerned over the Christ's presence on Earth," he said. His voice as obnoxious as the rest of him, a commanding boom.

"My father is an accountant. I'm pretty sure the only things he's concerned over are unbalanced ledgers and tax percentages."

"You persist in clinging to your mortal bonds."

"Yeah," Adam said. "I'm stubborn that way- caring about the people I love."

Azazel scowled, marring his fine features. "The fairies are keeping him in their stronghold, but I am told that he spoke to you today."

Adam bristled. "Fairies? That's a bit hypocritical, coming from you. Considering the things you and Lucifer get up to. Or, does he make you adopt a feminine aspect for your little playtimes? Keep everything on the straight and narrow?"

Azazel dropped his act of demonic superiority in his confusion. "Of course, we… keep things interesting through variety. We aren't… limited by the constraints of… human biology. Why do you want to know?"

Adam ran a hand over his face. "I don't. I really, _really, _don't."

Azazel's confusion deepened. "Then, why do you ask?"

"I think we're missing something in the translation here," Adam said, narrowing his eyes. "You called Aziraphale and Crowley fairies. If you weren't discriminating their relationship, what did you mean?"

"They are immortal, supernatural, beings of Earth, with wings. I had come to understand that the humans called such creatures fairies. Is this incorrect? Are they some special type of bird?"

Adam laughed and shook his head. "No, I guess they're definitely fairies. Hit the nail on the head with that one." He huffed out another residual laugh, at the anticipation of bringing it up in conversation, and sighed. "What do you want with me, Azazel? It's been a long day. I'm exhausted. Get to the point."

"What did the Christ discuss with you today?"

"Mostly obscure, out of date, television and movie references, and dinosaurs."

"Your father does not approve of your interest in the terrible lizards."

"Actually, my dad thinks dinosaurs are pretty interesting." Adam crossed his arms over his chest.

"_Lucifer_," Azazel amended coolly, "wishes you would devote your energies to other pursuits."

"He can wish all he wants," Adam said. "It's none of his business."

"Do you know why Jesus is on Earth?" Azazel asked, clearly knowing a losing argument when he saw one.

"Same thing the rest of you want, apparently" Adam said. "He's here to wind me up and take the piss."

"He wants your urine?" Azazel asked. "What is he going to do with it?"

"That part is the mystery," Adam said, quite seriously. "Why don't you see if you can figure it out?" Adam brushed past Azazel and continued on his way to his car.

Azazel went to find a library to break into, for _research_.

oOoOoOo

Aziraphale woke with Yeshua snuggled in against his chest, and Crowley's arm slung over both of them. The Christ was snoring like a bear with a head cold.

"You awake, angel?" Crowley asked.

"I don't see how anyone could sleep through this racket," Aziraphale answered.

"A few minutes ago, he had a nice little angelic chorus."

"I do _not_ snore."

"You _do_," Crowley said, and Aziraphale could hear the smirk in his voice. "Not like this, mind," he added, as Yeshua inhaled a particularly nasally intake of breath, "but you do snore- cute little angelic whistles through your nose."

"You're lying."

"Could be," Crowley said. "If you felt like joining the rest of us in the 21st century, you could record yourself and find out."

"I have no need for electronics," Aziraphale said. "It's just a passing fad."

"Yeah, humans always give up on things that make their lives easier," he said with a snort. "Technological age, _indeed_. I'm sure it will all blow over in a few years."

"They're always staring into those little screens. It can't be good for them."

"All the knowledge of the world at your fingertips, angel," Crowley said suggestively.

"I already have all the knowledge of the world at my fingertips," Aziraphale argued. "I own a bookshop, and books don't require electricity."

"And, digital books don't burn," Crowley pointed out.

"It just isn't the same." Aziraphale shifted, and Yeshua let out a loud snore, before rolling onto his back and falling blessedly quiet. "Want to explain to me why I have the Son of God in my bed?"

"He didn't want to be alone last night," Crowley said. He had a note of sadness in his voice, and while Aziraphale had been feeling a bit cross at the whole scenario, the irritation melted away at the tone of concern.

"You don't mind, do you?" Crowley asked.

"I suppose not," Aziraphale allowed.

"Good," Crowley said. "We should probably make the bed a little bigger for tomorrow night though. I feel like a sardine."

"_Tomorrow night_?" Aziraphale repeated.

"He has emotional scarring," Crowley said. "Your lot really did a number on him with the whole martyrdom thing. You can hardly blame him."

"They aren't my lot any more than they are yours now, and a single night is one thing, but two weeks of this is quite another. How are we supposed to get any _alone time_?"

Crowley rose up on one elbow to look down at Aziraphale. "Are you calling Jesus Christ a cock block?"

Aziraphale flushed. "If the shoe fits."

Crowley smirked, and reached an arm over Yeshua to give Aziraphale's thigh a squeeze. "I'm sure we can work around him."

"Crowley," Aziraphale hissed.

At the same time Yeshua said, "You know I'm awake, right?"

And, Crowley smirked.

oOoOoOo

Yeshua was waiting in line at the Kosher Bakery. He was perfectly happy eating bread with yeast in it. The whole point of matzah was the ceremony behind it. It didn't actually taste that good, at least not the way his mother had made it. He was hungover, and he'd borrowed Crowley's sunglasses to spare his aching head from the light of day, but even with the near black-out cover that the side-shields provided, he mostly wanted to find a nice dark tomb to lie in for a few days.

Given that Crowley and Aziraphale needed some _alone time_ though, he had thought he'd best make himself scarce for a while, and buying some fresh bread seemed as good an excuse as any.

"Hello there," a musical voice asked from behind him. "You look like a fellow who enjoys water sports."

Yeshua turned to look at the man standing behind him in the queue. He was fine-boned and tall with a thick head of silver curls.

"Water sports?" Yeshua asked. He supposed this was what passed for small talk in the 21st century. "I grew up in the dessert actually. We didn't have a lot of that sort of thing."

The man's lips curved into a smile. "I've never had any experience with _that sort of thing_ either, but I'm willing to try anything once."

"New experiences are the spice of life," Yeshua agreed, and took a step forward as the next customer was helped. The man edged in close as he moved forward as well.

"Would you like to find somewhere to give it a try, then?" he asked in a whisper.

"Sorry," Yeshua said. "I'm meeting my nephew this afternoon. We're going to try something called _ice-cream_. It's supposed to be really good."

The man frowned. "I haven't researched that."

"Look into it," Yeshua advised. "It might be worth trying, if everything I've heard is true."

The man grinned again. "I certainly will."

Yeshua smiled back at him, and moved forward again, next in line at the counter. "Well, it was nice talking to you. I'm Yeshua, by the way."

"Az," the man started, and then coughed. "Asher."

"Nice to meet you Asher," Yeshua said, and turned away to step up to the counter.

"I'll see you later," Asher said, but when Yeshua turned back, he was gone.

oOoOoOo

Adam watched as Yeshua's face morphed from startled surprise to pleased enjoyment. "Good?" he asked with a laugh.

Yeshua made noises of agreement as he took another mouthful of his strawberry cone.

They were in Saint James's Park. Adam had met them there, not quite wanting to end up at the mercy of Crowley's driving. He wanted his car near at hand, just in case he felt the need to make a quick escape. With Azazel on Earth, he wasn't sure how much he trusted this little outing not to turn into something else. Part of him thought that he should tell Yeshua about the demon asking questions about him, but most of him wanted to remain neutral in the whole thing.

Crowley finished paying for their cones and came to stand beside them with his own iced lolly. He smiled fondly at Yeshua's pink mustache.

"We need to go feed the ducks," Aziraphale said.

"We do not," Crowley argued. "They're wild animals. They're supposed to be foraging for plants and whatever, not getting fat on handouts."

"They worry if they don't see us every now and again," Aziraphale said, "and I have some matzah in my pocket left over from those terrible B.L.T.s that you insisted we have for breakfast."

"Yeshua liked them."

"I'm quite sure that Yeshua would eat a charcoal briquette as long as you put it on a plate for him and soaked it in bacon grease first. I doubt he would even notice the difference."

"You let Crowley cook for you, and you actually ate it?" Adam asked Yeshua in an aside, impressed at the messiah's intestinal fortitude even more so now than over the crucifixion.

He'd tried to help Crowley make dinner for Aziraphale one time. _That _disaster had gone straight in the bin, and Adam had helped Crowley find the number for a good sushi place that did take away instead. The crucifixion was just an abstract concept to Adam. Crowley's cooking, on the other hand, was something he had real, tangible, experience with. He could practically smell it.

"I didn't want to be impolite," Yeshua said in a whisper, while Aziraphale and Crowley continued to argue about ducks. "It really is terrible; isn't it?"


	8. Chapter 8

Adam and Yeshua walked along the shore of the duck pond while Crowley and Aziraphale argued about feeding the ducks- while feeding the ducks.

Yeshua drew in a long breath through his nose, and his ever present smile took on a serene cast. "You know, I've missed this."

"Earth?" Adam asked.

"The smells," Yeshua explained.

"Duck shit and pond water?" Adam asked, skeptically, after having a sniff of his own.

"All of them," Yeshua said. "Heaven doesn't smell like anything. It's completely sterile. It's everlasting life, but without the dirty parts that make life, _life_."

Adam snorted. "I think I'd prefer sterility to an eternity of the smell of rotten eggs."

"Hmm?"

"Have you been to Hell?" Adam asked. "It's horrible. It's anguish and suffering, nasty smells, and creepy signs, and demons who wear slimy things for hats. Worse than that, it's all so arbitrary. One soul might spend an eternity being tortured for a sin that another person, who's hanging around the Silver City in paradise, committed a thousand years later. Only, it wasn't a sin anymore by then, so that guy gets to enjoy harps and fluffy clouds while the poor bugger who once wore a shirt woven from two different materials, in 300 BC, is stuck being tortured for all eternity."

Yeshua sighed. "I see your point. But, if you hate it so much, why do you fight against your chance to change it?"

Adam shrugged. "Why should I have to do it? There's a whole host of demons down there who rebelled against Heaven, because they didn't like the way God was doing things. Then what? God casts them out, so they spend the rest of eternity doing Her dirty work, until they get another chance to try to overthrow Heaven. Why bother with it? If they're only getting the souls of bad people, then why not just leave them to make their own Hell?"

"That would be chaos," Yeshua said.

"Isn't that the point?"

Yeshua frowned. "I don't know. You have me all turned around."

"Yeah," Adam said. "That's the problem with rock-solid faith; it doesn't hold up to questioning. Science is all about questions. Give a person free will, and suddenly they have a whole lot of questions." Adam looked back over his shoulder to glance at Crowley. He'd often wondered about that. If angels didn't have free will, then how could they rebel in the first place? And, if it was God's will that they should fall, and they had never had any choice in the matter, how could they be evil?

Crowley obviously wasn't evil. Most of the demons that Adam had met hadn't seemed particularly evil—not in the way that humans could be. Demons tended to fall into one of two categories, either they were repulsively ugly, with foul smells emanating from them, and the intelligence of your average jelly, or they had a kind of near divine beauty about them, with the sort of stubborn streak that might have caused them to ask the wrong sorts of questions in the first place. Adam supposed that there was some kind of order to it all, the ringleaders and the followers, but it really just brought up more questions. Were fallen angels the likes of Lucifer, Azazel, and Crowley somehow more divine in God's eyes, that they got to keep their good looks when they fell, or was there as much variety of appearance amongst the angels as there was with humans, and Hastur and Beelzebub had been just as ugly before the fall?

There was something else that he'd been wondering about as well. He wasn't about to ask Lucifer about it in a million years, because that would mean that he cared- which he didn't. It occurred to him now, that Yeshua might be just the person to ask though.

"So," he said. "Your mother was a human, right? I mean God gave Her, or _His_, seed to a virgin, mortal, woman, and nine months later, you pop out in the middle of a barn, right? That's how it went?"

"Yes," Yeshua said, "more or less."

"So, where did I come from then?" Adam asked. "Did Lucifer impregnate some young girl and then snatch me up, after the difficult part was over, to give me to Crowley for a little game of infant musical chairs? Which, of course, they botched anyway. Or did I just spring fully formed from his head like Athena?"

"Who's Athena?" Yeshua asked.

"Greek goddess of wisdom," Adam said.

"And she came out of Lucifer's head?"

"No," Adam said. "Well… maybe metaphorically, I don't know. Where did the other pantheons come from? I assumed humanity invented them. That's not really the point though."

"You want to know if you have a mother."

"No," Adam said. "I know that I have a mother. Her name is Deirdre Young, and she raised me. I want to know if someone gave birth to me."

Yeshua shrugged. "It stands to reason."

"Does it?" Adam asked. "Because, if that's true, then why bother with all of the baby swapping nonsense? Why not just impregnate the woman that you want to raise the Antichrist in the first place?"

Yeshua frowned. "Did you ask Lucifer?"

"No," Adam admitted. "I'm a bit worried over what the answer might be- Lucifer in female aspect and a maternity dress." Adam shuddered.

Yeshua sucked in a hiss of breath. "That _is _a little disconcerting. Still," he slapped Adam on the back. "You're here now, so there isn't any sense in worrying over it."

oOoOoOo

Azazel hadn't been to Earth in 2,500 years or so. The last time he'd been kicking it around the mortal plane, everyone had still been herding goats and living in tents for the most part. Still, all the old sins remained the same, just brightly packaged in a brand new format.

The library had seemed to be a dead end, until he'd had a bit of a fumble with one of the plastic cases arranged in rows on a long desk. It didn't take him long to figure out how it all worked, but he'd been distracted for an hour or two watching videos of cats. When he'd gotten around to typing "give him the piss" into the search bar, it had opened his eyes to a whole new world.

Now, he was back at it, catching up on a couple millenniums worth of innovation in the field of human sexuality. The librarians had asked him to leave three times now, but a little minor demonic magic had sent them scurrying away- back to their stamps and late fees.

Azazel was developing quite a list to bring back to Lucifer, and he would need to stop at the store he'd spotted next door to the fairy's bookshop to bring back a few souvenirs from his trip to Earth.

Turning his attention back to research for his mission had led him down a whole other rabbit-hole. He hadn't thought that their initial meeting had gone too badly, but as he had not been able to coax the messiah into temptation, it seemed that more drastic measures may need to be employed. If an interest in water sports was an indication of the bent of the Christ's particular kinks, he might well need to venture into some truly unfamiliar territory.

He wondered how the Lamb of God felt about furries.

Azazel wasn't ready to tip his hand just yet, but he thought that the manifestation of his horns might compliment some if the attire on offer quite well.

oOoOoOo

"I'm just not sure how comfortable I feel sharing a bed with your ex," Aziraphale was saying as he tossed bits of bread for the ducks. "I wouldn't want him to get the wrong idea, and if you have any designs on the possibility of it being the right one, you can just _think again_, you old serpent."

Aziraphale was refusing to meet his eyes, his posture tight and straight. Crowley just gaped at him.

"My _what_?" he demanded.

Aziraphale did turn to him then, to give him a skeptical look.

"You think me and Yeshua were… _what_? Off buggering on camelback while I led him on a whirlwind tour of every brothel East of Eden?"

Aziraphale stiffened and looked away again. "I'd rather not know the details."

"There aren't any _details_. We're just friends, angel. We've only ever been _friends_. I'm not going to say there was never anyone before you. I was a demon; it's part of the job description. But, Yeshua is celibate. I couldn't tempt him into bed with a twelve inch cock."

"I didn't think that was his preference," Aziraphale said. "Don't think that it escaped my notice that you were favoring a female aspect when we met in Golgotha. Though, I have to say, you've never made a very good showing as a woman. It wouldn't hurt you to pad the hips and the bosom a bit more. You always just look like a man in a dress."

Crowley scowled. "Not all of us need to be the belle of the fucking ball. Just because you're slapping on a pair of tits, doesn't mean they have to stick out like the prow of a ship. You always look like you're carrying around a pair of watermelons under your frock."

"Envy doesn't suit you, my dear."

"_Envy_," Crowley barked out. "I don't envy you for looking like some rejected actress at a casting of Baywatch." Crowley could see that the reference was wasted on Aziraphale, but he refused to clarify out of spite. "Anyway, tits or no, Yeshua was as celibate as a male praying mantis: right up until the end. So, for the last time, we were just _friends_. I have never, and _will_ _never _fuck Jesus Christ."

A woman passing by with a baby in a pram shot them an odd look.

"I believe you," Aziraphale said. "But, you wanted to."

"What difference would that make?"

"All the difference," Aziraphale insisted. "If it was just a one and done temptation, just_ work_, that would be one thing, but you care about him."

"Of course I care about him, we're _friends_."

"Surely you have some idea of how that makes me feel. You can't blame me for being a bit jealous."

"Oh, pot meet kettle," Crowley huffed out.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Just _you_. You with your Hundred Guinea Club, and your gavotting about with a green carnation shoved in your buttonhole, and your bloody _Oscar Wilde_ first editions, with the special inscriptions and their _darlings_ and _my dear fellows_, that you think I don't know about. And I can't say one word against the great Scottish twat without you getting your feathers ruffled."

He was doing it now, holding his shoulders in that way that suggested that, if he had his wings out, the feathers would be puffed out like the hair on an agitated cat.

"I have no idea what you're insinuating."

"Don't give me _that_. You and I both know that if Oscar _bloody_ Wilde had offered to throw you over his chaise lounge and bigger you silly, no divine miracle could have gotten your kit off fast enough."

"There was never anything like _that_ between us. I simply admired him as a writer."

"Rubbish. Great, steaming, piles of codswallop. You can't even say his name without getting little pink hearts in your eyes."

Aziraphale opened his mouth, ready with another completely unconvincing denial, Crowley was sure, but instead he said, "Oh, now what are they up to?"

Crowley turned to follow Aziraphale's gaze and saw Yeshua, standing on the surface of the duck pond, trying to coax Adam to join him. A crowd of pedestrians had started to gather around them, goggling at the spectacle.

"That's really not good."


	9. Chapter 9

"It's easy," Yeshua was saying, standing on the surface of the water with his hand extended to Adam. "Just try it. The worse that's going to happen is you get your feet wet."

"That isn't water," Adam said. "That's diluted duck shit."

Yeshua took a few steps further out onto the pond. "It will be fun. Just imagine that it's a solid surface. You know those cartoons where the coyote runs off the edge of the cliff, but he doesn't fall until he realizes that he isn't standing on anything? It's like that. Just don't realize that you're standing on the water."

"You comparing this to Loony Toons, isn't really making me feel a boost of confidence," Adam said.

"Don't be a coward. Come on."

"I'm not being a coward," Adam said. "I'm being a person who doesn't want to sink thigh-deep in duck shit."

"You have to take a leap of faith."

"Fuck faith," Adam said. "I don't have to do anything. Free will, remember?"

"Well, it's performance magic, innit?" a voice said from behind him. "Chris Angel, David Copperfield shit."

Adam turned, and there were almost a dozen people ranged along the bank behind him, watching. One of them had their phone out and was recording the whole thing.

"Uh, Yeshua," Adam said. "I think we'd better go."

"Not until you take a leap of faith," Yeshua insisted.

_Fuck it_, Adam thought. He closed his eyes and took a step forward onto what felt like a solid surface, much to his surprise. He opened his eyes, and dared a look down- expecting to end up doing an aquatic Wile E. Coyote impression, right into a big helping of duck soup. When he didn't immediately break the surface, he took another tentative step.

Four strides brought him to Yeshua's outstretched hand and beatific smile. Adam grabbed him roughly by the wrist and started jerking him towards the shore.

"The surface tension of this water is about 72 dynes/cm," he said angrily. "There just isn't sufficient cohesion between the molecules to compensate for our weight. It violates the laws of physics."

"What does that mean?" Yeshua asked, straining against Adam's hold on him.

"It means that water is a bloody liquid, and you can't walk on top of it!"

Adam felt vindicated satisfaction as Yeshua started to sink, but it evaporated as soon as he felt the cold seep of pond water permeating his trainers.

oOoOoOo

"What do we do about all these people?" Aziraphale asked, as Crowley helped pull Adam and Yeshua out of the muck.

"They think it's a magic act," Adam said, groaning with effort as he pulled one shoe loose from the sticky silt. "Give them a bit of showmanship, and they'll dismiss it as entertainment."

Aziraphale beamed, and Crowley glared at Adam.

Twenty minutes of bad hat tricks, the accoutrement for which Aziraphale seemed to pull out of nowhere, while Adam and Yeshua shivered, and Crowley seethed with contact embarrassment, and the crowd had dispersed.

"Well, I say," that was a jolly good show. Look, I've earned nearly four pounds." Aziraphale showed them his top hat, which held a scattered assortment of loose change.

"I've never been paid for miracles before," Yeshua said.

"Thank the modern skepticism of the masses," Crowley said. "You can give them as many divine miracles as you like, but all they want to know is how it's done. Tell them it's God, and they write you off as a lunatic. Pull a rabbit out of a hat, so they can spot the false bottom in the table, and they go away happy- secure in the superiority of their own cleverness."

"Yeah, great," Adam said. "Can we go now? I'm cold and covered in shit."

Crowley raised an eyebrow. "That's becoming a bit of a habit for you. Maybe you should stop having ideas that involve ending up at the bottom of the pond."

"You're only gloating because you weren't in there with me this time."

"I still don't understand why that happened," Yeshua said. He'd been sulking since Crowley had pulled them out of the water.

"You looked down and realized that you weren't standing on anything," Adam said with a shrug. "Christ and Antichrist, remember? My belief cancelled out your belief and physics took over from there."

"But,_ why_?" Yeshua asked again. "You ended up in the water too."

"Yeah," Adam said, getting to his feet. "But, I proved my point." He started walking to the car park.

"Oi, where are you going?" Crowley called after him.

"Home."

"Oh, no. This is your fault. I'm not letting Yeshua ride in my car like that. I've only just got the smell out from last time. You have to at least give him a ride back to the bookshop."

oOoOoOo

Once back at the bookshop, Yeshua had managed to convince Adam to stay at least long enough to get cleaned up, and to help him cook something for all of them to eat that would be at least marginally edible.

He had no idea what his Father had been thinking in sending him here. It was obvious that nothing Yeshua said was going to convince Adam to toe the company line, as it were. But, regardless of the futility of his assignment, he was determined to enjoy himself as much as he could while he on Earth.

He _had_ missed Crawly. The demon had always made life more interesting, and whatever he wanted to call himself these days, he was still the same sarcastic and self-confident bastard on the outside, and the same caring and self-sacrificing bastard, with a heart of melted butter, on the inside- much as he tried to hide it.

Whatever this thing was that he had going with the former principality, it seemed to suit him. He was definitely further from the edge of a nervous breakdown than the last time Yeshua had seen him. Though, Yeshua himself may have been partly to blame for that.

Aziraphale though, he couldn't quite put a finger on who he was exactly. Parts of him seemed every bit the morally superior angel, and Yeshua got the feeling that he didn't like him very much, but he had a sweetness and a joy to him that none of the Heavenly Host seemed to have.

He could be a bit stuffy with his prim suits and sense of propriety. At those times, it was hard to see what Crowley saw in him. They didn't seem like a good fit at all. But, at other times, well… they were almost like a unit, the way they complimented each other, like one couldn't possibly exist without the other.

He supposed it was a perfect example of the balance that his Father was always going on about. He'd had a good laugh over it the first time he'd seen Star Wars. _Bring balance to the force…_ He'd hardly been able to be in the presence of God for years after that. He'd just hear James Earl Jones in his head, saying, "_Luke, I am your father_," and he wouldn't be able to stop laughing. Yeshua secretly suspected that it was the reason He'd been favoring a female aspect for the last few decades.

Still, for all the obvious love between them, the idea that Crowley and Aziraphale were in some kind of romantic, sexual, relationship had completely sidelined him. Crowley was plenty demonstrative with his affections, always had been, but Aziraphale had been an angel not so long ago, and, whatever he was now, he hadn't Fallen. Admittedly, he didn't have any personal experience on the subject, but Yeshua knew a lot of angels, and the idea of any of them soiling themselves with the physical act of lovemaking was laughably ridiculous.

Watching Aziraphale now though, eating the chocolate cake that Adam and Yeshua had purchased at the supermarket for dessert, and making it look like he was committing the Sin of Onan, Yeshua didn't think he'd ever seen anything so hedonistic in his life. And, Crowley just sat there, chin resting against his hand, and watched him intently, like that was exactly what he was doing. It was practically obscene. And, well… Yeshua could imagine them soiling themselves with the physical act of lovemaking, all too easily.

He wasn't so sure that he wanted to share a bed with the two of them again.

He was pretty sure that the best idea would be to get out of the flat for a few hours to give them some more _alone time_.

"Don't you like the cake?" Adam asked, blissfully unaware, or at least ignoring, the scene before them.

Yeshua took another bite of his cake, but inclined his head toward Aziraphale and Crowley, meaningfully.

Adam snorted. "Yeah, they always do that."

"Do what?" Crowley asked, tilting his head towards them without lifting it from his chin.

"You're making dessert look like something that people should be sent to Hell for," Yeshua said.

Aziraphale pulled his fork out of his mouth with a little 'pop', and looked guilty. "We aren't used to having dinner guests."

Crowley smirked. "The way I see it," he said. "What's the point of immortal, moral neutrality, if you can't have a little damnation with your dessert, free of repercussions?" He turned back to Aziraphale. "Go on, angel, there's a bit of frosting left on the plate."

Aziraphale set his fork down, pointedly.

"Spoilsports," Crowley accused Adam and Yeshua. "You've fucked up a perfectly good angel. Look at him. He has food anxiety now. He can't even enjoy his dessert without worrying about how erotic he looks while he's doing it. And, there's whipped cream, too."

"I _knew_ we bought whipped cream for the cake," Adam said. "What did you do, steal it out of the bag while we weren't looking and hide it somewhere?"

Crowley shrugged. "I wanted some angel food later."

Adam made a gagging sound, and Aziraphale flushed an even deeper shade of red than he was already.

Yeshua cleared his throat. "Hey Adam, would you mind driving me somewhere on your way home? I have some shopping to do."

"Earplugs?" Adam dropped his napkin over his plate and stood up. "I was just leaving now. I'll give you a lift anywhere you want to go."

Aziraphale started coughing, and Crowley was failing to suppress a grin.

Yeshua had no idea what that was all about, and probably didn't want to know. He was starting to understand Adam's feelings towards them now—a fond and exasperated sort of love, accompanied by a sense of light disgust. He decided that discretion was really the better part of valor, and he joined Adam in a hasty retreat.

oOoOoOo

Yeshua had asked Adam to drop him at the nearest hardware and home improvement store, and he was wandering the aisles with a shopping trolley piled high with hand tools, hardware, and an exciting variety of power tools; a pair of bright red earmuffs sat atop the lot.

Before leaving Heaven, The Archangel Michael had given him a little plastic card, and told him that he could use it to buy anything he needed while he was on Earth. Adam had shown him how it worked when they had purchased food for dinner. It seemed simple enough. He wasn't sure if this was exactly what Michael had in mind when she'd given it to him, but he wasn't going to worry too much over that in the face of over two-thousand years of carpentry innovation. He'd been watching every home improvement show he could find for years, and he was eager to try out the power tools.

He was distracted for a moment by a display of nail guns, and he turned the corner without looking, accidentally crashing into someone.

"Oh, crap. I'm so sorry," he said, and hurried to help the… _someone_ up.

"I'm okay," he said, and got unsteadily to his feet. Yeshua wasn't sure if he was unsteady from being knocked over by the trolley, or if it was from the false goat-hoof shoes we wore under a pair of low-hung, fuzzy, pink, trousers. He wasn't wearing a shirt either, just a kind of hot-pink leather vest. He had a mask on over his nose and upper-lip to extend his face out into a short snout, and there were glittery goat horns peeking out between the tresses of his silver hair.

That's when Yeshua recognized him as the man from the bakery that morning: Asher. He didn't think there were that many humans going around with hair dyed that particular shade of metallic silver, though perhaps it was a wig. It made a bit more sense with the way he was dressed now. Yeshua wasn't quite sure how that was exactly, but modern humans had really expanded the idea of fashion to a whole new level.

"What a coincidence running into you again," Yeshua said. "I don't know if you remember me from this morning at the bakery?"

"You'd be hard to forget," Asher said.

Yeshua smiled to be friendly, though he was eager to get back to his shopping, and didn't want to get drawn into awkward small talk. "That's quite an interesting… um, _costume_?"

"Awooo," Asher purred, and stroked his furry tail- which seemed a bit incongruous with the whole goat thing that he had going on, but he seemed to enjoy petting it. "Do you like it?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, it's very…pink," Yeshua managed.

"I know where we could get one for you," Asher said.

"That's a very kind offer, but I would just ruin it, if I wore something like that tonight."

"Oh?" Asher smiled. "Plans to get dirty?"

"Well, this _is _a hardware store," Yeshua said, gesturing around. He was eager to get back to exploring this little slice of Heaven that he'd found. "I'd better get to it, if I want to get to the fun part tonight, but it was nice seeing you again. I really am sorry for knocking you over."

"No problem at all," Asher said. "I'm tougher than I look."

Yeshua didn't think that would be hard, if you went around dressed like an anthropomorphic, pink, goat on your down time, but he just smiled and gave a little wave as he turned his trolley down another aisle- marveling at just how many different types of chain they had in the 21st century.


	10. Chapter 10

The Sons, of God and Satan respectively, were finally gone, and Aziraphale and Crowley had retired to the bedroom. Now, Crowley had a lapful of sticky, whipped cream-covered, angel to enjoy, and he was working diligently to remove the stickiness, or add to it, depending on how you wanted to look at it. Aziraphale didn't seem to mind one way or the other, as he babbled between little moans and whimpers.

"I'm so sorry for my..._ahhh_… behavior lately. _Mmmnh…_ I really don't know what's come, _ungh_… over me."

"I have a few ideas," Crowley said suggestively, and bent his head to give a good hard suck at Aziraphale's nipple. (They each only had two, whatever Shadwell might think.) He released it with a pop, and smirked up at Aziraphale.

Aziraphale gave him a blessed out smile and batted at him. "Oh, _you._"

"Exactly," Crowley agreed, and flipped his angel over onto his back on the mattress for better access, as he got back to his dessert.

"Really though, my dear. _Ohhh… Huhng. _I've been acting just, _Gugh_… reprehensibly. I've no cause to, _ohhhhhh_… be jealous. It's just…" Aziraphale fell silent.

Crowley detached his mouth from the inside of Aziraphale's thigh to ask, "Just what?"

"Hmmm?" Aziraphale asked.

"It's just what?"

"Oh," Aziraphale said. "I suppose it's like your Mr. Mercury says." He gave him a soft smile. "_Crazy little thing called love."_

Crowley let out a little huff- one that meant, _how can you even be this soppy, _and _you're ridiculous, _and _how I love you_. Then, he dipped his head lower, flicked out his forked tongue, and made his angel _shake all over like a jellyfish._

oOoOoOo

Adam had a small flat in Oxford, where he lived alone, save for Dog.

He'd once had a serious girlfriend, but Susan had left him after half a year, because she wanted more excitement from life, and Adam was just too _ordinary_. He couldn't even be mad about it. It was just too ridiculous. Then, he'd tried a serious boyfriend for a while, but Jarrod hadn't been interested in being as serious as he'd led Adam to believe, so Adam had kicked him out after finding a condom wrapper on their bedroom floor that didn't belong to him.

There had been the odd fling here and there over the years, but it was hard to keep up the ruse of an honest relationship when you were secretly the Antichrist, and it wasn't as though anyone would've believed him if he had told them. He'd thought, when he was a kid, that maybe he'd end up with Pepper, or even Wensleydale, but the older they all got, the more laughable that idea seemed.

So, Adam was decidedly single at the moment.

Which was why he was surprised to come home to find someone else in his flat.

"I took Dog for a walk," Azazel said from his couch, where he had Adam's laptop open across his thighs.

"Dressed like that?" Adam asked, closing the door behind him. He eyed Azazel up and down, taking in the disco goat outfit he was wearing with less surprise than might be expected. "Why _are_ you dressed like that?"

"I thought Jesus might be a furry," he said, still not looking up from the computer screen.

"You thought," Adam started, but he couldn't finish the sentence. The fact that he was feeling relief over the semantics of Azazel saying that he'd thought Yeshua might be a furry, rather than just, _'Jesus is a furry_,' so completely summed up his life right now that it left him reeling. "Why did you.." he started, but "no. Nononono. I'm not getting dragged into this."

"I think I'm going to try BDSM next. Does this seem like too much?" Azazel turned the screen so that Adam could see the video playing: a man spread-eagled on a St. Andrew's cross while two other men, dressed head-to-toe in black leather, saw to him with a variety of implements.

"Given his history, I'd say so, yeah."

Azazel made a thoughtful noise and turned the laptop back to face him. "Well, maybe he'd like to get a bit of his own back. I could go on the cross, I suppose. It might be a nice change of pace. Lucifer's had me clocking a lot of hours in the Second Circle lately. And, it would fit with the rest."

Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. He shouldn't ask. He _knew_ he shouldn't ask; he didn't want to know, but the words were leaving his mouth anyway. "Fit with the rest of what?"

"Oh," Azazel said. "I didn't tell you. I figured out why Jesus wants your urine. Have you heard of water sports?"

_Well, that backfired spectacularly_, Adam thought. He wasn't sure how an offhand idiom, misunderstood by a demon, some 2,500 years out of date in the area of slang, had spiraled down into the assumption that Jesus Christ wanted to be peed upon by a furry, anthropomorphic goat, with a leather daddy fetish, but Adam had a sinking suspicion that it was his fault.

"Am I to understand from all of this," Adam gestured at Azazel, the furry costume, the laptop, _all of it_. "That Lucifer has sent you here to seduce Yeshua."

"I don't suppose you have any suggestions?"

Adam pretended that he hadn't heard that. "I need my laptop," he said instead. "I have a paper due tomorrow."

"I need it," Azazel said. "The library people are getting crafty. They've disconnected the internet."

"So, reconnect it."

"I tried that. It won't work."

Adam snorted. "Well, that's what you get for crossing the librarians. You don't mess with librarians. I still need my laptop back, though. Go buy a mobile and watch your pornography on there like everyone else."

Azazel reluctantly handed it over. Adam quickly closed the fifteen or so tabs worth of pornography, and half a dozen videos of goats in pajamas, which he resolutely refused to ask about, and closed the laptop. "I don't really appreciate you just breaking into my flat and messing with my things like this, either."

"I don't really know anyone else," Azazel said. "I'm supposed to be concentrating on Jesus; I can't just go spending my efforts on seducing random strangers into bed, so that I have somewhere to stay."

A week ago, this statement wouldn't have caused him to cringe the way it did now, but thanks to Crowley's completely unnecessary explanation over the special angelic and demonic meaning behind the phrase, 'making an effort,' Adam understood only all too well _exactly _what Azazel meant, and he didn't make any conscious decision to say it, but the words were leaving his mouth anyway. "If you're worried about wasted efforts, maybe you should lay off the pornography."

"That's research," Azazel said, but his eyes shifted away, leaving no doubt in Adam's mind that his interest hadn't been purely academic.

"Fine," Adam said. "You can stay here, if you must, but don't touch my stuff, and clean up after yourself, and go and buy a mobile,… and don't wank on my couch."

"Done," Azazel agreed readily, getting unsteadily to his feet and heading for the door. Adam gazed at the hooves half hidden beneath the fuzzy trousers, and he wasn't entirely sure if they were the true manifestation of Azazel's feet, or clever shoes made to look like hooves.

"You might want to change before you go out in public again," Adam suggested.

"Hmm?" Azazel turned to look at him.

Adam gestured up and down to indicate all of the… _everything_. "That isn't really something that people wear out in public. I don't even want to think about what my neighbors are going to say if they saw you out walking Dog like that."

"They might get the impression that you're more adventurous than you let on," Azazel said, with a wink, and he didn't change a single thing as he went out the door.

Adam groaned. Why did he let himself get dragged into these situations? He was the Antichrist for all the good it did him. Surely that ought to at least come with the ability to control his own life. From now on, he was going to use whatever power he had to generate a field of impotence in a hundred metre radius around himself. Though, that wasn't likely to improve his dating problems any.

oOoOoOo

"You're very demanding, aren't you," Crowley taunted.

"For fuck's sake, Crowley. Get on with it."

"And such language." Crowley smirked as he ran a hand down the length of Aziraphale's back to cup one cream-colored buttock of angelic arse.

"Fuck. Fuck. Sodding. Arse. Cunt. Shite…. _Damn_," Aziraphale said. "There, are you happy now? I can curse if I want to. I just choose not to. It isn't polite. Now, _get on with it_."

"I don't know if I should, if you're going to talk to me like that. _Rude_, angel."

"If you don't stop teasing, I'm going to flip you over and bugger _you_ instead," Aziraphale threatened in a low growl.

"Hmmm," Crowley hummed as he kneaded idly at his angel's cheeks. "Naked wrestling, and here I thought that you didn't like my taste in statuary."

"I just don't think it should be displayed in your front hall, you wretched tease."

"And is that what you want? My submission?"

"_Noooo,_" Aziraphale moaned. "I want you to bloody well get on with it already, before I discorporate and have to explain to God why I need a new body."

"Mmmm, yes, that would be an interesting discussion. I can just imagine you- all shame-faced and stammering."

"Damn you, Crowley."

"Been there, done that," Crowley muttered, dipping his head low to flick out his forked tongue. Aziraphale groaned. "Are you ready to admit that I was right about Wilde?"

"_What?_ No. _Ahhhhhh. Hnnnn. _Why on Earth would you bring that up _now_?"

"Because, I don't like you getting all _high and mighty_ with me over errant desires that I may or may not have entertained, _momentarily_, two thousand years ago. You've never been as innocent as you like to pretend. So, just admit it. You wanted Wilde to shag you. It's fine. I don't mind really."

"But I _didn't_," Aziraphale protested. "The thought never crossed my mind."

"Don't lie to me, angel. I can do this all night," Crowley threatened, teasing at him some more.

Aziraphale whimpered. "Fine! I thought about it," he admitted. "Is that what you want to hear?"

He turned onto his side and rose up onto one elbow, so that he could look at Crowley, before he continued. "It would be hard not to. That's all his circle ever talked about- who was buggering whom on that particular week. That doesn't mean that I was secretly lusting after Oscar _bloody_ Wilde."

Crowley raised an eyebrow.

Aziraphale huffed in frustration. "I told you. It wasn't _like that_. I just liked the attention. I fit in there. You've always been fashionable, no matter which century we were in; whatever country, you always found your niche. Well, that was mine: 1880 until about 1900. That was my era of fashionability, okay? That was when I got invited to all the best parties with all the brightest people. And you _missed it_, because you were too busy sulking over the fact that I wouldn't give you holy water to kill yourself. I didn't want Wilde, _you idiot_, I wanted _you_, but you weren't there. So, yes, I passed the time with some enjoyable company. But that was it. He liked me, and I liked him. We were _friends_. I needed that, because my best friend had been asleep for a quarter of a century, and didn't look to be dragging himself out of bed anytime soon. And, Oscar was hopelessly in love with Lord Alfred Douglas, who was a huge wanker, but that was enough to get him two years of hard labour in Newgate anyway, and it may as well have been a death sentence. And, since you weren't there for any of that either, you can just shut up about it, all right?"

"Yeah, all right. I'm sorry, angel. I didn't realize."

"Well you should have. Oscar was a lovely person, and I miss him dearly. He didn't deserve what they did to him, and he certainly doesn't deserve your scorn." Aziraphale paused for a moment as his own words sunk in. "I suppose that I should have understood about Yeshua as well. He really is a nice young man. I shouldn't wonder that you're so happy to see him after everything. I expect that I would feel the same way, if I suddenly had Oscar back. That's the problem with befriending mortals; their lives are over so quickly." Aziraphale sighed. "Oh, I really have been behaving abominably. And now I've gone and ruined the mood."

"Oh, just shut up, and give me a few minutes. I'll have you back to cursing at me in no time."

Aziraphale let out a huff, but he turned back over onto belly, and pillowed his head in his arms. "I still don't want him in our bed again."

"I said, shut up," Crowley said. "Anyway, I'm not sure you have to worry about that after your display at dinner. Yeshua is starting to look at us the way that Adam does when we take the innuendo a step too far."

"When _you_ take it a step too far, you mean," Aziraphale said. "You're the one with the pornographic taste in hall decoration."

"Back to the naked wresting, are we? If it's really that important to you, I'm happy to throw out my wings, and let you try to pin me down."

"How about, _you_ shut up, and put that tongue of yours to use for something that it's actually good at?"

"And we're back to the demands," Crowley observed. "That didn't take long." But, he was happy to comply, and within moments all transgressions and maudlin talk of old friends was forgotten, and Aziraphale was back to begging for it.

Crowley's restraint was just about spent, and he was about to give in, when a noise from downstairs brought them both up short.

"What was that?" Aziraphale asked.

"Don't care," Crowley said.

The noise came again then—a high pitched buzz that rose to a near screeching whine and then tapered away again.

"It's coming from the shop," Aziraphale said.

"I really, _really_, don't care," Crowley repeated, with a whimper.

"It could be vandals," Aziraphale protested.

"How much damage could they possibly do in the next ten minutes?"

"The _books_, Crowley."

Crowley threw his head back and groaned.

oOoOoOo

"IF I HAD A HAMMER," Yeshua sang out over the buzz of his new circular saw. "I'D HAMMER IN THE MORNING. I'D HAMMER IN THE EVENING. ALL OVER THIS LAND."

Between the saw, the singing, and his new earmuffs, he couldn't have possibly heard Aziraphale and Crowley creeping down the stairs, and he stood with his back to them now, in the center of a circle of chaos. Books had been removed from shelves and stacked haphazardly in piles on the floor, where they gathered a coating of sawdust, while Yeshua cut their shelves into pieces.

"**IF I HAD A HAMMER, I'D HAMMER YOU BACK UP ONTO THAT FUCKING CRUCIFIX, YOU CRETIN!"** Aziraphale shouted, as soon as the shock of the scene before them had worn off enough for him to form words.

The sound of that at least, if not the meaning of it, seemed to register over the din, because Yeshua turned the saw off and pulled the earmuffs down to rest around his neck like a torque, as he turned to them. The corners of his eyes crinkled behind the safety glasses that he wore, and he flashed them a broad smile.

"Oh, hey guys. Are you finished already? You might want to put some clothes on."


	11. Chapter 11

Adam had three empty beer bottles sitting on the tea table, a half-finished essay before him, and his wicked step-mother sitting on the other side of the couch with a new mobile- either watching bestiality porn, or more cute goat videos. He was trying his best to focus on his essay and ignore the bleating, either way, when his phone rang.

"Hell," he started, but before he could get to the, "o," Crowley was raving on the other line.

"I need you to get over here NOW! There's sawdust everywhere, and the bookshelves are in pieces, and Aziraphale has barricaded himself in the backroom with his first editions, and he won't come out. Yeshua just keeps babbling about _Homes Under the Hammer_, and lumber deliveries."

Adam closed his eyes. "I don't know what any of that means. It's late. I'm in the middle of a paper that's due tomorrow. You'll just have to figure it out yourself." He hit 'end call' on his mobile and set it back down on the arm of the couch.

"What was that about?" Azazel asked, not looking up from his video.

"Jesus is having wood delivered, so Aziraphale locked himself in the backroom. Not my circus; not my monkeys."

"Delivered?" Azazel asked, looking up now. "Who's delivering it?"

"How should I know? Workmen, I guess."

Azazel frowned. "How do you order them in? Is there a catalogue? Do they have a website? Do you pick the workmen out, or do they just send someone over?"

"What? " Adam started, but Azazel was already typing hurriedly on his phone. "No. That isn't what I meant. Does everything have to be sexual innuendo with you? He's just," but his phone was ringing again, and Adam figured that it was a lost cause anyway.

Adam didn't know why he even bothered to look at the screen—a picture of Crowley raising an eyebrow at him over the rims of those obnoxious sunglasses. "I'm not driving to Soho at midnight," he said into the phone.

"Of course not; why should you? You just left," Yeshua said.

Adam wasn't sure if he should expect Yeshua to be the voice of reason in this particular situation, or if he should just turn his phone off and finish his paper. "What's going on?" He asked anyway.

"I don't know. Crowley just handed me the phone. Aziraphale had some kind of fit, because I was using his bookshop to do some carpentry. He swore a whole bunch, then he started moving a bunch of books to the back, and now he won't come out. I don't see what he's so upset about. I'll clean up when I'm finished and he hasn't opened the shop since I've been here anyway."

"He's really particular about his books- like Crowley with the Bentley, but multiplied by a hundred. You should probably put everything back exactly how it was."

"Well, I've already started cutting the shelves down for a different project. My lumber delivery doesn't come until tomorrow, and I figured I'd get them out of the way now to make room for the new ones. I'm putting in slide-along double-shelves. I saw it in a home improvement show. He'll be able to organize everything better and widen the aisles a little. His customers will have a much easier time finding what they want."

"_Yeah_…" Adam sighed. "Maybe do the opposite of that instead. Can you put false fronts on the shelves that make it look like all the books are something boring that no one would ever want to read? I mean, more so than usual: _A Detailed History of Kitchen Utensils, _or, _European_ _Vegetable Production 1432-1683_, or _How to Make Butter in 37 Easy Steps_."

"You don't need that many steps to make butter," Yeshua said. "First you milk the goat, and then-"

"Yeah, yeah, you're missing the point." Adam didn't want to think about goats. "Aziraphale doesn't want to sell books. He wants a big, climate controlled, room to store all of his books in. He opens that shop for about six hours out of the week, and spends the whole time fussing over anything that anyone touches, while subtly trying to shoo them out the door. Just… it _matters_ to him, okay? I get that you were trying to do something nice, but you overstepped. Put everything back the way it was, and he'll get over it… eventually."

"But, I can't just… I've started already. This will be better. I promise."

Adam sighed. _Not my circus; not my monkeys_, he reminded himself. It was becoming a mantra. The only problem was that they _were _his monkeys, or, more accurately, his mish-mash, pseudo family of mortifyingly embarrassing, supernatural morons. "Just put it back. I don't have time for this. I have a paper to write on bivalve arthropods, and I'd like to get some sleep before class tomorrow. I have a life beyond cleaning up after you lot. Figure it out." Adam ended the call before Yeshua could argue again.

He hit the enter key on the laptop to wake his sleeping word processor and glanced over his papers while he waited for it to rouse.

The kind of music that only ever plays at the beginning of really bad, soft-core, pornography listed through the room, and he glanced at Azazel, intently staring at his mobile.

"I have an order here for some wood," a masculine voice said, with genre typical, cheesy, over-acting.

"I know just where you can put it," a feminine voice responded in a sultry purr.

"I'm going to the library," Adam announced, slamming his laptop shut and gathering up his papers.

"They're closed," Azazel said, "and the internet doesn't work."

Adam growled.

oOoOoOo

"Come on, angel," Crowley said. "I brought you some cocoa. Why don't you come out? We'll go back upstairs and we can clean-up this mess in the morning. Yeshua said he was sorry."

"I'm fine right here," Aziraphale said from the other side of his barricade.

"I put marshmallows in it," Crowley said.

There was a pregnant silence, and then the boxes moved aside, and stacked themselves along the wall.

Aziraphale sat in his armchair with his arms wrapped tightly around half a dozen books in his lap. _The Wilde first editions, naturally_, Crowley noted, but didn't comment.

"He's ruined my bookshop."

"It isn't that bad. It's just a couple shelves, and some dust. He wants to make you new ones."

"I don't want new ones."

"I know." Crowley pried Aziraphale's arms away from the books and carefully set them aside and handed him the cocoa."Don't you think you're being the slightest, _t__iniest_ bit, irrational?"

"Oh, I am, _am I_? And how is the Bentley? Still an automatic, playing _Baby You Can Drive My Car_?"

Crowley winced.

"Precisely." Aziraphale sipped his cocoa, brushing one manicured finger along the angel wing handle. "It's strange how attached one can become to material things. I never had anything before coming to Earth, not really. And now," Aziraphale looked around the room, "after having lost it all once, I find the idea of even one book being damaged… _devastating_."

"Don't act like that's a new development. Remember that I was the one that had to scoop you out of the ashes of the Library of Alexandria," Crowley said, and immediately wished that he hadn't at the look of sadness in his angel's eyes. _Too soon_, he reminded himself. _It's always going to be too soon to bring that up_.

"Yes, well," Aziraphale sipped his cocoa. "It's the loss of history. Books are the embodiment of humankind's immortality. If they can be preserved, then it's a way to remember that little slice of time that those people lived in. The world as it was for them. Their triumphs. Their defeats. What was most important, for those people, in that instant—important enough to set down forever. Even the fiction, especially the fiction, can tell you things about people who've been dead and gone for centuries. The loss of that, it's more than just the loss of paper, and ink, and binding. It's like the loss of someone's soul. It's being forgotten."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you about the internet. Digital copies. That way it doesn't get lost to time, or fire, or messiahs with power tools."

"I thought you said that the internet is just a depository of pornography and videos of cats knocking things off tables," Aziraphale said, wryly.

"Well, that too. It's good for lots of things."

"Here, hold this," Aziraphale said, handing Crowley his mug as he stood and went over to one of the shelves. He pulled down a leather-bound book and reverently opened it to his desired page. He carried it over and showed it to Crowley. It was a handwritten, illuminated manuscript—one side of the fold completely dominated by an angel with spread wings and face held up to a beam of light from overhead, expression the very picture of devoted reverence.

Crowley raised a brow at the image. The expression and white-blonde curls bore a definite resemblance to a certain former angel of his intimate acquaintance. He smirked. "I think I had you making that face a couple of hours ago."

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. "This codex was copied by a Franciscan monk in the 12th Century. Every letter of the text was painstakingly drawn over months, maybe even years. The illuminations and illustrations are a work of love."

"Well, it's a work of love when I get you to make that face, too," Crowley defended.

"My point," Aziraphale continued, "is that this, right here, these pages, this ink, _this_," he jiggled the codex a little. "_This _is a man's legacy- his mark on the world. He touched these pages; he wrote these wrote these words; he drew these pictures, nine hundred years ago. Through luck, and chance, and some careful preservation by yours truly, this little piece of him still exists here and now in a future that that humble monk, working diligently in his scriptorium, never could have even dreamed of. You don't get that from a digital copy on a computer screen." He brought the book to his face and inhaled deeply, looking more like the illustration of the angel on the page than he ever had while communing with The Almighty, and probably more, though Crowley hated to admit it, than he did while in the grip of carnal passion as well.

"Yeah, okay," Crowley said, "when you put it that way."

Aziraphale carefully closed the book, and returned it to its place on the shelf.

"I'll make sure that Yeshua understands," Crowley said, handing Aziraphale his cocoa back.

Aziraphale took it and returned to his chair.

"Now, drink your cocoa, and let's go back to bed. As lovely as you look in that blanket, togas went out of fashion a couple of millennia ago, and even if it is tartan, that isn't how you wear a kilt."

oOoOoOo

Adam had gone to bed a few hours ago, but the sun hadn't quite risen yet. Azazel lay on the couch, practically upside down, with one leg thrown over the back, and the other folded beneath him, head resting on one crooked arm, half on and half off the couch cushion, while he held his mobile above his face, and watched a leather-clad dominatrix apply a complicated device to a bound man's sensitive parts, with professional curiosity.

The woman abruptly stood and turned toward the camera, shaking out her blonde bob into a mop of raven curls, and suddenly she had a male aspect—her rounded face now all sharp cheekbones and dark eyes.

"Hello, darling," Lucifer said. He still wore the leather pinny and thigh-high leather boots, and he looked down at himself and then back up to meet Azazel's eyes with a raised brow and a sardonic quirk of his lips. "And what are we up to here?"

Azazel smiled, flipping around to right himself into a seated position on the sofa. "Research."

"I see," Lucifer said, and started pacing around the dungeon idly. He waved a hand at the very confused sub tied to the table, and the man disappeared. He made a curious humming sound as he lifted a riding crop off a peg on the wall to slap it into his hand. "And, how goes your Temptation of Christ?"

"Slowly," Azazel said, "but I've made contact. How is Hell?"

"_Hellish_ without you," Lucifer said, pouting his lips out in a mockery of petulant dejection. He took a few steps further into frame, hiding his lower body beneath the edge of the screen as he peered out at Azazel. "What are you wearing?"

"It's called a furry. Some new sex thing the humans have cooked up. I don't completely understand it, but it's a lot more comfortable not having to hide my horns."

Lucifer gave a deep chuckle, warm with amusement, and Azazel felt a twitch of arousal that a dozen hours of watching humans fornicate hadn't managed to elicit from him. "And what else have you learned from your _research_?"

"The world's oldest profession is still going strong, but they seem to need a lot more props than in the old days. There are stores just full of sex aids and lingerie, and businessmen in suits looking shifty. It's wonderful."

"It sounds lovely. You do know that you're meant to be working though, not shopping for toys?"

"I am working. He hardly leaves the company of the fairies though, and I don't want to draw attention just yet."

"I wouldn't call what you're wearing discreet." Lucifer looked down at the leather pinny he was wearing again, running his hands down the sides of the cinched corset. "Though, perhaps I've missed something."

"I don't know about discreet, but I think I'm going to have to get you one of those for at home." Azazel let his eyes fix on the jut of Lucifer's clavicle where it met a leather strap.

"Perhaps," Lucifer allowed, "if you can successfully finish your work." He twisted the riding crop between his hands, and gave it another smack into his palm. "I wouldn't mind one of these either." He sighed. "Do hurry up and get it over with, so I can have you back. This place is utterly wretched without you. How's our son?"

Azazel shrugged. "In a snit as always."

"What is it this time?"

"Something about snails, I think. Honestly, I quit listening after the third time he said _fossil record_. He's sleeping now."

Lucifer huffed. "Sometimes I wish he'd gotten a bit more of your personality instead of mine. He does it just to be obstinate."

"He'll come around," Azazel said. "He's letting me stay with him."

"He _is_?"

"Of course. He's always got on just fine with me. _You're _the one that insists on pushing him on everything. If you just lay off him a bit more, you might actually get along."

"I'm trying," Lucifer said through gritted teeth. "But, every time he's here, he sulks around, and acts like it's a huge imposition that his family might like to get to know him, and it isn't as though I can go up to Earth whenever I like."

"He has abandonment issues," Azazel said. "He doesn't think of us as his family, not really. He has his adopted parents, and it's going to take time for him to feel that way about us. The way you argue with him doesn't help."

"If that bastard Crowley had given him to the right family, we wouldn't be in this situation."

Azazel sighed. "Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if we'd just kept him, and raised him ourselves. We didn't get our war anyway, and he's the only child we'll ever be able to have, unless God decides to try again. Maybe He'd get a smarter one this time. I swear, that Yeshua is the most oblivious man I've ever encountered. I might have to forget the temptation and just hand him a sex manual instead."

"If you think it will help," Lucifer said. "Just don't get too distracted with the boy. I know how you get when your maternal instincts kick in. You coddle him."

"Oh, I do not," Azazel said. "I just try to talk him down when he's ready to punch you in the face. Someone has to play Devil's Advocate."

"That isn't what I keep you around to play. Focus on your work, so we can get back to our _pleasure_. The school year will be over soon, and we can kidnap Adam for a couple weeks without him going into a rage over it. You can advocate for me all you want then."

"You know, you could just say that you miss me," Azazel said, smiling fondly.

Lucifer sneered. "Shut up, and distract me for a while with what you've been learning from the humans."

Azazel was more than happy to oblige. He just hoped that Adam was soundly asleep. Afterward, he did wonder, a bit guiltily, if that counted as wanking on the couch.


	12. Chapter 12

"I thought you said you were going to fix everything, Crowley," Aziraphale said, wincing as the sound of the hammer started again.

"I've moved him out of the shop," Crowley said. "I talked to him about the books. We miracled away all of the dust. What more do you want?"

"I want it back to the way it was," Aziraphale demanded. "You said that you'd fix it. Now instead of two missing bookshelves, they're all gone."

"We were very careful with the books, I promise. They're all safely boxed up, and we didn't touch anything in the backroom. Your Wilde books are stashed very safely in our bedroom. Yeshua is going to make you some nice new shelves, and you'll have even more room for books when he's finished."

"You know, the last time my shop was destroyed, Adam put everything back the way it was before- apart from a few minor additions to my inventory. Perhaps I should just ask him to put it right again."

"Or, I can take you out for breakfast," Crowley suggested, "maybe stop by the park on the way home, feed the entitled, bastard, ducks. They probably have ducklings hatching by now. You can train them to beg for handouts. And, we'll let Yeshua build you some new shelves, and whatever else he has planned, and just see how it all turns out. If you don't like it, we'll have Adam _Antichrist _it away after Yeshua leaves."

"Yes, all right then," Aziraphale allowed. "Does he have to make such a racket though?"

The hammering started again, this time accompanied by, "JESUS LOVES THE LITTLE CHIIIILLLDREN."

oOoOoOo

Azazel wore a pair of jeans with work boots and a tight, white, t-shirt today, a tool belt was slung low on his hips. He had his hair pulled back into a tail, and his horns and wings hidden from the view of the mortal plane.

He loitered around the corner from A.Z. Fell and Co. until he saw the delivery lorry pull up and park in the space that usually hosted Crowley' Bentley.

Azazel straightened from the wall and sauntered over to the workmen, a prop clipboard materializing in his hand as he went.

"Hey, fellas," he said, "they sent me over from corporate to oversee this delivery."

A tall bloke with a buzz cut and a clipboard of his own met Azazel. "No one told me anything about that," he said.

"Last minute. Special customer," Azazel informed them. "You boys wait here while I go in and have a chat, and I'll let you know when we're ready to have you come in."

The three other men exchanged a look, and then Buzz-cut said, "Yeah, fine, however you want to do it."

Azazel hitched up his tool belt and went to the front door of the shop. He knocked a few times, and waited, but no one came to the door. The buzz of a saw seemed to be coming from the roof. He held a hand over his eyes, and looked up, but the decorative cornices along the top of the building blocked the roof from view. He tried the door handle, and, finding it unlocked, let himself in.

On his previous visits, keeping an eye on Jesus, he'd gotten a good look at the shop through the windows. It hadn't looked like anything special, just your average bookshop, with shelves stacked full of old books, and a few armchairs scattered around. That had changed. It looked as though the fairies had decided to close up shop. The shelves were gone, and in their place stood stacked boxes, presumably containing inventory. Azazel had a hard time finding a path through the maze of boxes and behind the counter to the hall leading to the stairs in the back and the flat above the shop.

He didn't bother calling up the stairs as he went. He wanted to get a good look at the inside of the flat while he had the chance. A pillow and a rumpled blanket seemed to indicate that someone had slept on the couch, most likely Yeshua, which was a good sign. Azazel had a poke around the bedroom. It definitely smelled like sex in there, a can of whipped topping on the bedside table beside a stack of Oscar Wilde books.

_Interesting._

He picked up the one on top, and flipped open the cover.

An old inscription read:

_For my dear friend Aziraphale,_

_It is sweet to dance to violins _

_When love and life are fair;_

_To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes_

_Is delicate and rare: _

_But it is not sweet to dance with nimble feet_

_To dance upon the air!_

_Sweet cherub, if dance is but a vertical manifestation of a horizontal desire, then I think no one may find a better partner in that most scintillating of waltzes than you. My dance card is always free for our next gavotte._

_Oscar Wilde_

Azazel frowned at the words, puzzling them over. He knew that Wilde was down in one of the circles; he thought that he might have even worked a session or two with the playwright. He knew for certain that Lucifer had more than a few volumes of Wilde's in the infernal library—though they'd never been to his own taste. But, now he had to wonder how good Aziraphale could have possibly been at his job, if he'd allowed one of his friends to end up in the pits.

He returned the book to the pile and went to find the access to the roof. It wasn't very difficult; he just had to follow the orange extension cord that ran up there from one of the outlets in the hallway.

Yeshua had a makeshift work space put together up there. Two bookshelves were stacked together horizontally to make a bench, covered with tools and scraps of wood, and he was bent over it marking down measurements and notations with a carpentry pencil.

Azazel cleared his throat.

Yeshua turned to look at him, smile of greeting fading to a puzzled frown. "Asher? Is that you?"

Azazel hooked his thumbs into his tool belt and pushed out his chest to show off the muscles beneath the tight shirt. "Who else?" he asked.

"What are you doing here? Are you a friend of Aziraphale and Crowley?"

"We've met," he said, and quirked his lips into a suggestive smirk. "I heard that you needed some _wood._"

"Oh," Adam said, smile returning. "You must work for the lumber yard. I guess that explains why you were at the store last night. Did they have you pulling mascot duty?"

Azazel frowned. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. In all the porn that he'd researched, the man had just said the line about the wood and they'd gotten right to business. He didn't appreciate this detour off the script, and now Yeshua was giving him a strange look while he waited for an answer. Azazel tried to subtly flex his muscles.

"Well, I need it up here, if that isn't too much trouble," Yeshua said.

_That's more like it_, Azazel thought. "I don't mind having to work for it. Anything to _please_ a customer."

"I don't mind giving you a hand," Yeshua said. He tucked his pencil behind his ear and took a step toward Azazel.

"I know right where you can put it," Azazel said, closing the distance between them. He made an effort to manifest an erection—a quick adjustment of hormones and blood flow. He'd never managed to produce one naturally in these situations. It wasn't that he minded the occasional carnal temptation, but it was work; it had never caused the sort of physical reaction of true arousal that he got from Lucifer. He grabbing Yeshua's hand and pulled it forward to give him a feel of the sort of craftsmanship that you could get from a true professional.

Yeshua's eyes widened in surprise, and he jerked the hand away. "I think you have the wrong idea," he said.

Azazel sighed. _And just when everything seemed to be going so well_. "Okay, no more games then. I'm here for you to use however you want, anything you like. Do you want me to suck your cock?"

Yeshua made a choking noise, and took another step back, putting a hand up between them. "I don't… Look, I'm very flattered,… really. You seem like a very nice man, but I just _don't_… I…thank you very much for the offer, but… I'm just… not interested. Yes," his voice found a bit of firmness. "Not interested. No thank you."

Azazel rolled his eyes. "A blowjob is a blowjob, but if the lips just _have_ to belong to a woman, I'm happy to accommodate." He pulled the tie out from his hair and gave it a shake as he trembled and shifted to a female aspect. His jeans pulled tight around more rounded hips and his shirt strained against a set of ample breasts. Azazel sucked in her lower lip and let it scrape against her teeth as she pouted it out again, and gave Yeshua a coquettish smile. "Is this better?"

Yeshua took another step back, and his voice went cold. "Who are you?"

"I can be anyone you want me to be," Azazel said in a soft soprano.

"You're a demon," Yeshua said.

"And I'm guessing you aren't burdened with an overabundance of deductive reasoning," Azazel said.

"What?"

"No shit, Sherlock," Azazel said. _This guy, brain like a box full of hammers._ "But that's okay. It's never been a problem for me before." She licked her lips again and took a step forward. "Do you want me on my knees for you?"

"No. I… I _told you_; I'm not interested. Thanks, but _no thanks_. I think you should go now."

"But I could make it so sweet for you." Azazel advanced on him, reaching a delicate hand out to run it down Yeshua's chest. "You don't have to be nervous. I promise to be gentle."

Yeshua grabbed her hand. "I don't know who you are, but I AM NOT INTERESTED. If you're a friend of Crowley's, that's great. He's out with Aziraphale, and I'm not sure when he'll be back, but you're welcome to come back then."

"I'd rather _come_ now."

"I'm sorry, but that just isn't going to happen." Yeshua used the hand not holding hers to tap the top of Azazel's head.

When the spots cleared from her vision, Azazel found herself standing in front of the shop, one hand still held up.

"Oi, where did you come from?" Buzz-cut asked.

Azazel spun on the heels of her work boots, face twisted into a scowl, and gave another shudder to return to his preferred form.

The workman just blinked at him.

"Well, go on up then," he said. "Maybe you'll have better luck." He thrust his clipboard at the man and stalked off.

oOoOoOo

"Do you know a demon named Asher," Yeshua asked Crowley when they had returned from their outing.

"Asher?" Crowley repeated, setting bags of takeaway on the table. "No, we had an Astaroth, but I don't remember an Asher."

"You don't mean Ashtoreth do you?" Aziraphale asked.

"Could be short for something," Yeshua said.

"That's the name Crowley was using when he played nanny for little Warlock. He's the boy we thought was the Antichrist before we realized the mix-up."

"Rub it in some more, _Bucky_," Crowley mumbled.

"Probably not then," Yeshua said. "This one has been following me around for a few days now, only I didn't realize that he, or she, was a demon until today. I think he might be trying to… How do you say it now? _Get into my pants_?"

"Yeah," Crowley said, "that's how we say it."

"That's how _you_ say it," Aziraphale argued.

"Well, what does this demon look like?" Crowley asked.

"Tall, curly silver hair, horns maybe, he was wearing this furry pink goat costume when I saw him yesterday."

"Azazel," Crowley winced. "What is that incompetent incubus doing up here?"

"Trying to get into Yeshua's pants, apparently," Aziraphale said. "Why, who is he?"

"Lucifer's consort."

"Satan has a boyfriend?" Yeshua asked.

"I don't know if I'd go that far," Crowley said. "Azazel is just sort of… _Azazel_. He hangs around the infernal residence most of the time, and Lucifer gives him special projects. He gets away with murder. Well, not _murder_, but you know, skipping paperwork and performance reviews, and skiving off on anything he feels is beneath him. He figures that just because he's sharing Lucifer's bed on the regular, that somehow gives him more authority than the rest of us."

"Rest of _them_, you mean," Aziraphale said.

"Yeah, yeah," Crowley waved a hand, "you know what I meant. He's a huge twat, but not much to worry about."

"Still," Aziraphale said. "If Lucifer has sent him here to tempt Yeshua, it might be best to get rid of him. We have instated a No Demons or Angels on Earth policy, after all. If we don't enforce it, they'll think that they can get away with all manner of tomfoolery."

"_Tomfoolery_?" Crowley raised a mocking brow.

"Oh, you remember what it was like dealing with Dagon and Uriel. Next thing we know, we'll have Hastur and Sandalphon up here causing a ruckus. That's the last thing we need right now."

Personally, Crowley wouldn't mind having to run off Hastur. He was still spoiling for some more payback, running him over twice hadn't been nearly enough to satisfy Crowley's desire for revenge, but Aziraphale had a point. They had to have _standards._

"Yeah, all right, we'll take care of it, Yeshua. You have my word that your chastity will remain intact."

Yeshua flushed. "That's not.."

"No," Crowley waved it away. "Don't even worry yourself over it. Consider us the champions of your Christly Virginity. There won't be any incubi cornering you down dark alleys on our watch."


	13. Chapter 13

Adam was busy with school all week. Apparently, being omniscient hadn't saved God the oversight of planning this little family reunion while school was in session. So, Yeshua filled his days with deconstructing Aziraphale's bookshop, under the continued assurance that he was making improvements.

Aziraphale's nerves already frayed to the breaking point, he and Crowley spent most of the afternoon on Tuesday patrolling the neighborhood, on the lookout for Azazel. Only to return to find that construction had moved on to the kitchen.

"Where's the oven gone?" Crowley demanded.

"Somewhere that it can never hurt another living soul ever again," Yeshua told him from under the sink.

oOoOoOoOo

Wednesday afternoon's canvassing of local shops ended with a return to the flat to find that the kitchen cupboards had gone the way of the bookshelves.

"So help me, Jesus," Aziraphale threatened, "if you've damaged a single cookbook."

"All safely boxed downstairs with the rest," Yeshua assured him.

oOoOoOoOo

Thursday it was the kitchen table that was gone.

"Oh, for the love of," Crowley shouted. "Yeshua!"

But, the Son of God was beyond their wrath- on the roof again, singing loudly over the banging of his hammer.

"IMAGINE ALLLLL THE PEOPLE, LIVING LIFE IN PEACE."

"I'll give him peace, a piece of my mind," Aziraphale grumbled, but Crowley put a restraining hand on his shoulder.

"Leave it, angel. What's the use at this point?"

"What's the use? _What's the use?_" Aziraphale exploded. "Tomorrow we'll come home and find that he's taken out a wall, or ripped up the flooring. I thought he was supposed to be fixing things, not destroying them."

"It's a process."

"I can't live like this, Crowley," Aziraphale said, flinching each time that the hammer fell.

"I still have the flat in Mayfair, we could go there for a few days, let him get on with whatever he's doing. Come back when the construction is over."

"Oh, and what are we supposed to tell God, when He asks us why His Son is being pestered by Satan's concubine while we're supposed to be keeping an eye on him?"

"We haven't seen horn or feather of Azazel since Yeshua sent him packing. Maybe he's given up."

"Do you really think so?" Aziraphale asked.

Crowley shrugged, not really thinking it would be that easy.

oOoOoOoOo

Azazel hadn't given up.

He'd spent a few days sulking and licking his wounds, but he was ready to get right back on that _Christing_ bicycle- just as soon as he thought of a different angle of approach.

Revealing his demonic nature had clearly been a mistake, and he was definitely _not_ looking forward to reporting that failure to Lucifer. So, he was just going to have to make some headway before The Prince of Darkness decided to check in again.

In the meantime, he endeavored to make himself a pleasant houseguest. He walked Dog while Adam was at school. He spent a few demonic miracles on the laundry and dishes. He bought takeaway so that Adam had a warm meal to come home to at the end of the day. For his efforts, Azazel received suspicious looks and questions about his motives. That was okay. He was a demon; demons couldn't go around expecting people to trust them- even if that person happened to be their son.

But, tomorrow was Friday, and Adam had plans to return to Soho after class ended for the week, so if Azazel wanted to get any work done without Adam getting in the way, he'd have to think of something quickly.

He just had no idea where to go from here. He'd run the gamut of human sexual depravity, or at least the more interesting highlights, and Jesus hadn't hit on any of it. Carnal temptation might not be the correct approach, but Azazel's range of experience had never progressed much past tempting his mark into bed, giving them a thorough tumble, and moving on to the next. Why fix perfection, after all? But, it seemed that the Son of God was immune to his charms, and if he was going to have to branch out into new areas of sin after all these millennia, then he figured he'd better have some more specific information to go on.

That was how Adam came home from class that day to find Azazel sprawled out on the couch, wearing elbow-length, red, satin gloves- not with some new, disgusting pornography that Adam would have preferred not to know existed, but instead cracking the spine on a copy of the New Testament.

Azazel looked up at a clicking sound and a flash of light. "What are you doing?" He asked.

"Just collecting blackmail material," Adam said, returning his phone to his pocket. "What are _you _doing?"

"Trying to get through this thing," Azazel said, tossing the bible down with a disgusted noise. "Either Jesus Christ is the most boring person who ever lived, or Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John need to take some remedial writing classes."

"And what about that?" Adam asked, looking pointedly at the silicone wristband that stood out glaringly purple against the red satin gloves—"WWJD?" written upon it in white, block letters.

"Oh," Azazel held his wrist up. "Do you like it? The lady at the Christian bookshop gave it to me. It means: what would Jesus do? Apparently, the answer is spout off a lot of incomprehensible parables about the Kingdom of Heaven, and then die a gruesome death. Apart from a bit of necromancy and a snappy comeback about people in glass houses throwing stones, there isn't a whole lot for me to work with here."

"You went to a Christian bookshop? Isn't that against the rules?"

"You would think so, but that place was a temple to commerce and capitalism if I ever saw one. The book still stings a bit though," he added, wiggling his fingers to show Adam his gloves, "thus, the protection."

"Of course," Adam said. "Moneylenders in the temple?"

"That was a bit wrathful, I guess," Azazel said. "Not sure I want to tempt him to wrath though."

"I think righteous anger is different than wrath," Adam said. "Does this mean that you've given up on seducing him?"

Azazel sighed. "I don't know. I suppose I'll just head back over there, and keep an eye on him until inspiration strikes."

"You're going back to London, now? What about lunch?"

"I made you a sandwich," Azazel said, smiling at him. "It's in the fridge."

oOoOoOoOo

Yeshua was adding to Crowley's new collection of orchids that evening. He was just zipping up his trousers, and watching pale pink blooms open on the newest addition, when the plant suddenly burst into flame.

"Oh, hey Dad," Yeshua said.

"Don't you, 'hey Dad,' me," a disapproving female voice said from the burning orchid. "I sent you down there to talk sense into Adam, not for a vacation."

"I'm trying."

"Oh really?" God said, sarcastically. "Do I have to read off your credit card transactions?"

Yeshua winced. "Adam is busy with his dinosaur classes during the week. I needed something to keep me busy. I thought I'd just update Aziraphale and Crowley's flat a little while I'm here. You know, as a way to say thank you."

"And it didn't occur to you that studying dinosaurs might be just the sort of thing that you should be steering him away from?"

"I tried to explain," Yeshua defended, "but it just made him angry. He's very serious about his studies."

"I know everything that's going on down there," She said ominously. "Perhaps you need to try a bit harder. Stop the home renovations and get back to work."

"I really don't think he's going to budge on the dinosaur thing."

A ficus, a fig tree, and three more orchids burst into flame. "JESUS CHRIST, I AM NOT ASKING FOR YOUR OPINION. I AM TELLING YOU TO DO YOUR JOB!"

"Okay, okay, Jeez. Lay off the _Voice of God_ thing before you blow my eardrums out, and have the whole block bleeding out of their eyeballs. I'll go talk to him some more today, but I'm not mentioning the dinosaur thing again. He's really tetchy about it. If you want him to listen to me at all, you have to forget about the dinosaurs. Just let it go as an eccentricity—_crazy little Adam the Antichrist and his giant lizards_."

"Fine," She said. "Do it your way. Just see that the boy understands."

Yeshua nodded, and then, realizing that she couldn't see him, said, "Yes, Father."

"I can see you, and I know what you're thinking. I'm omniscient, remember?"

"Right. So, then you know about the…" Yeshua trailed off.

"The demon trying to corrupt you with wildly inventive sex acts? Yes."

"I don't know that it was that inventive," Yeshua said. "I met a harlot in Ptolemais who said that for five shekels she would suck a-"

"Don't finish that sentence," God interrupted. "You really are completely oblivious. It almost makes me feel sorry for Azazel. Maybe I should just bring Adam up here, and send _you _down to work with Lucifer for a few millennia instead."

Yeshua let his mouth fall closed.

There was a long sigh from the bonfire of houseplants. "The answer to the question you want to ask is no."

"But, would it really hurt anyone if I just-"

The rest of Crowley's plants burst into flame. "NO!"

"All right. All right. Relax. Forget I asked. Doesn't seem fair, everyone else gets to go around, spending their shekels however they like, and I can't even-"

"If you would like to spend the rest of eternity in Hell, feel free to do whatever you like."

"Yeah, fine," Yeshua mumbled.

"Get back to work," God said, and then the fire roared high, and went out, leaving only charred plant matter behind.

Far too late to do any good, the smoke detectors started to go off.

There was some crashing and banging, and a moment later, Crowley emerged into the hallway, a bed sheet wrapped around his waist. "What's going on?" he asked. "Is there a fi- fuck! What happened to my plants?"

Yeshua winced. "Dad called."

"Da- Dad? God damn it." Crowley took another step toward the bathroom, surveying the damage with a horrified look. He pulled his sunglasses off in a rage, and turned his angry gaze upward. "Haven't you ever heard of a telephone? Doesn't anyone in your family have an ounce of common fucking courtesy? That's two centuries of carefully cultivated fear destroyed in an instant! Do you have any idea how much work it takes to keep that many plants in line? The hours that I've spent watering, and pruning, and threatening to turn them all into salad?" Crowley scoffed. "But, what do you care? It's all the same to you. One little Word from your lips, and you can make an Eden wherever you like. Never mind me."

"Sorry," Yeshua said.

"Not your fault." Crowley put a hand on his shoulder, and addressed the ceiling again. "Try using the phone next time!" He looked back at Yeshua thoughtfully. "Thirsty?" he asked.

"I have to go back to Oxford now," Yeshua said. "Dad thinks I'm not spending enough time with Adam. Do you mind if I borrow the Bentley?"

"Yes," Crowley said, still surveying Vegetageddon with horrified numbness. "Get your own car."

Yeshua didn't think that he'd be able to buy one with his credit card. "Could you give me a ride then?"

"Can't it wait until tomorrow?"

"Not if I don't want Her to call back."

"I promised Aziraphale that we could go see A Midsummer Night's Dream tonight, while the Royal Shakespeare Company is still in town. He's angry enough with you already. If we have to miss it to take you to Oxford, I'll never hear the end of it. You'll just have to take public transportation."

"What about Azazel?"

"If you run into him, I'm sure he'll offer you a ride."

"That isn't funny, Crowley."

Crowley smirked. "It was a little bit funny."

oOoOoOoOo

Adam paced his flat, holding his mobile in one hand. Crowley's face looked back at him from the screen, and the green call button glared at him, accusingly.

He should let Crowley and Aziraphale know that Azazel was on Earth and tasked with seducing Yeshua, but he really didn't want to take sides. Still, letting Azazel kip on his couch was sort of taking sides, wasn't it? And, if Adam was going to take sides, was Hell really the side that he wanted to take?

On the other hand, he'd also spent the day with Yeshua on Sunday, so it wasn't as if he was playing favorites. If he wanted to let Azazel stay with him for a couple weeks, that didn't mean he was actively working against Yeshua, just that he wasn't actively working against Azazel. He was uninvolved. He was neutral. He was Switzerland.

Of course, if he was on any side at all, it was the side of Earth, so he should really let Aziraphale and Crowley know what was going on.

No. _No_. He didn't owe any of them anything. All they ever did was cause trouble complicate his life.

He was Switzerland.

He put the phone down.

He groaned.

He picked the phone up again.

oOoOoOoOo

Crowley held the door to the Bentley open for Aziraphale. He was in full hat and tails, and he had to take the top hat off to get into the car.

Yeshua stood in front of the shop, watching them.

"Did you find a ride?" Crowley asked him. "We could drop you at the bus station."

"No, that's all right. Someone is on their way."

He raised a brow at that, but before he could ask, the roar of an engine drowned out all other sound on the busy street. Crowley turned to look for the source of the noise, and beheld a pale motorbike with a pale rider upon it, and the rider's name was Death, a trouble followed with him.

The motorbike skidded around the Bentley and came to a stop in front of Yeshua, and the rider pulled back his hood to reveal the grinning skull beneath.

"LONG TIME, NO SEE," he said to Yeshua in a voice like the sound of a million mortal bonds being severed.

"Thanks again for the ride," Yeshua said, as he climbed onto the back of the bike.

Crowley watched in disbelief, as Yeshua gave him a wave and the two sped off. He shook his head and got into the Bentley.

"Was that-?" Aziraphale asked.

"Yeah," Crowley said.

"Do you think that's a good idea, letting Yeshua hitch a ride with Death?"

"Probably not," Crowley said.

"Should we…"

"We're going to watch a bunch of fairies cast love spells on stupid humans," Crowley said. "Yeshua is off with The Angel of Death. Not our fault if something happens to him. Let old boney answer to God, if he gets carried away."

"Right," Aziraphale agreed. "I'm sure that God will understand."

"At least we don't have to worry about him getting seduced," Crowley said.

Aziraphale made an uncertain noise in the back of his throat.

Crowley's phone rang.


	14. Chapter 14

"Let me make sure that I'm understanding this right," Crowley growled into the phone. "Azazel has been hanging about your flat all week, and you didn't think that you should maybe let us know about that?"

"I'm telling you now," Adam said.

"We've spent the last three days looking for him, and you're telling me that he's been camped out on your sofa this whole time?" Crowley glanced over at Aziraphale and they exchanged an irritated look.

"Wait. You knew he was on Earth?"

"He tried to blow Yeshua on the roof on Monday."

Adam made a gurgling noise. "Yeah, you see this, _this right here_, is why I wanted to stay out of it."

"Hard to stay out of it when you're letting Daddy's sex toy sleep on your bloody sofa."

"Fuck you too, Crowley," Adam spat out. "At least he cleans up after himself and doesn't put me in the situation of being forced to buy him lube out of pity."

"You're never going to let me live that down are you?"

"I HAD TO BUY YOU LUBE."

"You didn't _have_ to. We were making due."

"You were committing gross acts of indecency, is what you were doing," Adam complained."Baylis and Harding should have you on some kind of watch list. It's no wonder why Aziraphale was in a depressive spiral, weeping and drinking the whole time. I'd be depressed too, if my boyfriend was experimenting with beauty products in my private places."

"We didn't just use it on him, and it wasn't that bad."

"No. No. _Nope_. End of this conversation right here. Azazel is on his way. Put Yeshua in a chastity belt, or whatever. Just leave me out of it."

"Actually," Crowley said. "Yeshua is going to Oxford. God torched all my plants and told him he's supposed to be spending time with you, not destroying our flat. Death picked him up a few minutes ago. They're on their way now."

"Death?" Adam said it in a way that made it sound synonymous with arsehole.

"Look, I don't know how things work in your world," Crowley said, "but it's date night, and I don't get to use the lube unless I spring for dinner and a show every once in a while." He caught Aziraphale's shocked expression at his words, out of the corner of his eye, and plowed on."I told him to take the bus, but he called Death instead. He's riding pillion like some biker moll of the apocalypse, on his way to Oxford. They're your problem now."

"Have I mentioned lately how much I hate you?" Adam asked.

"I have three hours of Shakespeare to sit through, a goat to send back to Hell, and a lover to console over the vagaries of holy home renovation. I don't have time to play chauffer on top of that. "

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "Just… don't hurt Azazel, okay?I know he's an idiot, and a demon and everything, but… just don't hurt him."

Crowley didn't miss the concern in Adam's voice, and he knew that, whatever else he might be, Azazel was worth putting up with to Adam- which was about the most anyone could say for any of them.

"I'm all out of Holy Hand-Grenades anyway," Crowley quipped.

Adam let out a sigh of relief. "Good. I'm not sure that you can count to three anyway."

Crowley smiled. "Course I can. One. Two. Five."

Adam chuckled. "Right then, you keep your angel happy, and I'll take care of Jesus and the tosser in the Halloween costume."

"Don't laugh in his face. I hear he doesn't like that."

"Try not to heckle the Prince of Denmark," Adam shot back. He'd once attended a performance of Hamlet with Crowley and Aziraphale, and it had left an impression. "It's rude, and the poor guy has enough problems."

"I don't see how it can be rude if we have direct permission from the author, but it's Midsummer Night's Dream this time, anyway. Thank… _whoever_."

"That's the one with the fairies, right?"

"Yeah."

Adam snorted out a laugh. "Perfect. You'll fit right in," he said, and ended the call.

"What fools these mortals be," Crowley muttered, tossing his mobile down onto the seat beside him.

"I gather that Azazel is coming here," Aziraphale said.

Crowley made an unhappy sound of agreement.

"Do you have a plan?"

"Yeah," Crowley said, starting the car. "It's date night. We have tickets and dinner reservations and everything. Practically an itinerary." He put the car into gear and pulled out into traffic.

"What about Azazel?"

"He'll keep," Crowley said, and didn't miss the happy look on Aziraphale's face.

oOoOoOoOo

Death pulled off the motorway into the dirt and gravel drive of a dodgy little biker bar. It was the sort of place that you wouldn't stop at for a piss, even if your bladder was about to burst. If you called to report a crime in that place, the dispatch officer would pretend to have a bad connection and hang up on you.

The faded sign above the door, said "SCUZZ'S ROADHOUSE," in peeling red paint.

"Why are we stopping?" Yeshua asked, as he climbed off the bike and stretched.

"JUST SOME OLD BUSINESS I NEED TO TAKE CARE OF. DO YOU WANT A BEER?"

"Yeah, okay," Yeshua agreed, and he followed his skeletal friend inside.

The place was just as shabby inside as out. A scattering of scarred tables and chairs, survivors of more than a few drunken brawls, were occupied by an assortment of rough men and hard women, dressed in weathered black leather.

Death strode passed them unremarked, as Yeshua, in his hoodie and man-bun, drew their cold eyes. Death took a seat at the bar, and the barkeep, a large man with a graying ponytail and wind burned face, turned to him.

"HELLO, PEOPLE COVERED IN FISH," Death said in the funerary tone of chiming church bells.

"Oh, fuck," Scuzz said.

oOoOoOoOo

Aziraphale and Crowley didn't actually buy tickets for the show; they never did, but there was a pair waiting for them at the will call desk, and their private box was ready for them with a bottle of champagne, all the same.

Aziraphale had once expressed some guilt over this, saying that they should really make more of an effort to patronize the arts, but Crowley figured that ol' Willy owed enough of his success to them that, even four hundred years later, the least that anyone still performing his plays could do was comp them a pair of tickets.

"I'm so glad that they're doing The Dream this year," Aziraphale gushed, looking over the program while they waited for the show to start and Crowley poured the champagne. "I think it must be my favorite."

"S'alright," Crowley said, "but I thought you liked the gloomy ones."

"I like all of them," Aziraphale said.

"You do not. You hate Titus Andronicus."

"Oh, that one doesn't count."

"Why not?"

"It's a collaboration," Aziraphale argued, taking the champagne flute Crowley handed him, "and I think we have George Peele to blame for that one. There's no art to it. It's all bloody violence and no poetry."

Crowley made a noise of agreement. "Well, it'll be all frolicking fairies, bestiality, and romantic hijinks tonight," he said, raising his glass.

"Cheers," Aziraphale said, clinking their glasses together and taking a sip.

oOoOoOoOo

Scuzz's hands shook as he pulled two pints of lager and set them down in from of them.

"I, uh," he started, voice shaking as much as his hands. "I didn't think I'd see you again."

"THAT'S UNRESONABLY OPTOMISTIC OF YOU."

Scuzz swallowed down his nerves and let out a shaky laugh. "I guess it is. I s'pose it's too much to hope that you just came in for a beer."

"I THOUGHT WE COULD TAKE ONE LAST RIDE TOGETHER. IT'S A LOVELY NIGHT FOR IT."

Scuzz made a choking sound close to a sob.

"DO NOT FEAR ME, OLD FRIEND. TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON. A TIME TO SOW, AND A TIME TO REAP. YOUR TIME HAS SIMPLY COME- ON TO THE NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, THAT GREAT HIGHWAY IN THE SKY."

Scuzz nodded, tears streaming down his face. He looked to Yeshua then. "Who are you? I don't remember you from last time."

"THIS IS SHADY CONTRACTORS WHO DON'T FINISH THE JOB."

"What?" Yeshua asked, setting down his mug and wiping the foam from his mustache.

"SORRY. PRIVATE JOKE," Death said. His skull seemed to be grinning more than usual. "THIS IS YESHUA BAR YOSEPH, FORMERLY OF NAZARETH- BETTER KNOWN AS JESUS CHRIST, THE PROPHET MESSIAH, SON OF GOD." Death made some of his beer disappear somewhere within the depths of his cloak. "YESHUA, THIS IS MELVIN STAMPOLE, CALLED SCUZZ. ONCE, EMBARRASSING PERSONAL PROBLEMS. BRIEFLY, THINGS NOT WORKING PROPERLY EVEN AFTER YOU'VE GIVEN THEM A GOOD THUMPING, THOUGH SECRETLY, NO-ALCOHOL LAGER. BUT, ACTUALLY, PEOPLE COVERED IN FISH."

"Uh," Yeshua said, uncertainly. "Nice to meet you." He extended his hand.

"Yeah,"Scuzz said, shaking it. "Er, you too, Jesus… sir."

"Yeshua," Yeshua corrected. "The whole Jesus thing is just a string of translations from Greek to Latin to English. I've never really cared for it, but Dad says it's more palatable for the masses."

Scuzz squeaked a little.

Death drained his beer. "I'M AFRAID WE'RE ON A SCHEDULE."

Scuzz looked around the room at the other bikers. "Can't I say goodbye at least?"

Death tilted his skull to the side. "ONE ROUND TO START THE WAKE, IF YOU LIKE. THEN WE REALLY MUST BE GOING."

oOoOoOoOo

At some point during the performance, Aziraphale and Crowley's chairs had transformed themselves into a plush, red, loveseat, and they lounged together- watching the actors strut their hours upon the stage.

"Is it just me, or do Oberon and Puck always look as though they're moments away from disappearing into the scenery to give the bushes a good rustling?" Crowley asked.

"He certainly isn't all that keen on his Queen," Aziraphale agreed, "what with that business with Bottom's ass." He giggled into his champagne.

Crowley smirked, leaning in to flick his forked tongue into Aziraphale's ear to extend the sound.

Aziraphale let out a chuckling sigh when Crowley pulled away, and leaned further back in his seat. "This play always puts me in such a decadent mood. I think it's all the frolicking in the forest. It just makes me want to sink into a nest of pillows in a fairy bower and have someone hand feed me grapes."

"I could find some grapes."

Aziraphale hummed. "I would suggest it for later, but I expect we'll be busy with Azazel. Have you decided what to do about him yet?"

"The course of true love never did run smooth," Crowley quoted.

"I think the two of us have proven that true enough over the years, but how does that apply to Azazel? You don't mean to suggest that he and Yeshua…?"

"No," Crowley said quickly. "Hell, no. He's in love with Lucifer."

"But he's a demon."

"So was I."

"That's a bit different," Aziraphale said.

Crowley raised a brow. "Your view of the universe is always so narrow. It isn't different. You've just always felt more comfortable thinking of me as the exception to the rule. Trust me. I know the signs."

Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably. "So, he's in love with Lucifer. How does that change things?"

"How would you feel if I asked you to sleep with Yeshua?"

"You already have. It wasn't the most comfortable night's sleep I've ever had, I have to admit."

"Forgive the euphemism," Crowley said, "but you know what I meant."

Aziraphale considered it. "I suppose that I'd feel a powerful need to slap you in the face like the jilted heroine in an Austen novel."

"Exactly."

"That's your plan then? Get him angry enough with Lucifer to abandon his mission and head back downstairs to give the Prince of Darkness a piece of his mind?"

"Something like that," Crowley said, making a show of yawning and stretching as he wrapped an arm around Aziraphale's shoulders. "Hush now and watch the play. They're getting to the bit with Bottom's ass in the fairy bower."

oOoOoOoOo

Yeshua was drunk.

Death's offer to start off Scuzz's wake with a free round for the bar patrons had extended to a second, and then a third, and a fourth, and then Yeshua had lost count.

Word had spread that old Scuzz was giving out free drinks, and everyone in the local Hell's Angels chapter had shown up with assorted hangers on. Scuzz was grinning a gap toothed yellow smile as he made his way around the tables with a pitcher in each hand, topping off drinks and making time to talk to everyone.

"Ya know, this is a nice thing you're doing," Yeshua said, leaning precariously in his stool to talk to Death.

"HE WAS ONE OF MINE- IF ONLY BRIEFLY, AND NOT BY MY DOING."

Yeshua frowned. "_What?_ One of _yours_? A _horseman_? Of the _apocalypse? _Dunt remember him. 'Less Pestilence got reborn as a skuzzy biker after he retired._" _

"BIKER OF THE APOCALYPSE," Death corrected, "AND I TOLD YOU, HE WAS PEOPLE COVERED IN FISH."

Yeshua's frown deepened for a moment, and then resolved itself into a wide, sloppy, smile. "I love fish. Can we go fishing?"

"GO HOME JESUS, YOU'RE DRUNK."

"Can't go home." Yeshua hiccupped. "Can't ever go home again. 'S been two thousand years. You've taken everyone I ever knew. Nothin' there to go back to. An _Heaven _ is… well… heavenly, but 's not the same. Unless this is my wake, an yer jus' not tellin' me ev'rything?"

"IT ISN'T. I ALREADY HAD TO TOTE YOUR SOUL AROUND FOR THREE DAYS, ONCE. I'M NOT GOING TO DO IT AGAIN."

"Well, then, I hafta make Adam agree to stop playin' with poop and go to Hell." He took a long drink. "Not even sure I think he should. But iss par' of the' inevitable plan, isnnit?"

"INEFFABLE."

Yeshua waved a hand. "Same thing. Tomato, potato, tomato, potato." He frowned. "Wha' was I sayin' again. Oh, righ' fishes." He chuckled. "You hafta watch this. Haven' dun this since Bethsaida."

Yeshua turned in his stool, scrunched his eyes shut, and waved his hands about as though he were conducting an orchestra.

There was a 'plop' and a haddock fell from nowhere to land with a splash in the pitcher in Scuzz's right hand. He stopped in the middle of his sentence to stare at the fish in confusion. There was another 'plop', and he turned his head to see the tail of a second fish sticking out of the pitcher in his right hand. He looked up to see where the fish were coming from. This was a mistake. There was a 'sploosh,' and a mountain of fish rained down from the ceiling, completely burying the biker.

"Ooops," Yeshua said, quickly lowering his hands and spinning on the stool to face the other direction, so as not to appear guilty. He ruined the illusion, almost instantly, by suddenly cackling into the stunned silence, and barking out. "Ha! People Covered in Fish! I get it now!"

oOoOoOoOo

Azazel hovered outside the windows of the flat above the bookshop, peering in, but all was dark and empty. He beat his wings a little harder to rise up to the roof for a landing. He touched down lightly on a stack of boards that he hadn't noticed in the dark, lost his footing, and tumbled down into a pile of sawdust, face first.

He came up, sputtering out a mouthful of powdered trees, more of it stuck in his hair and feathers like a fine coating of fairy dust.

Azazel ruffled his feathers and shook his hair out, but that only seemed to make the sawdust and wood shavings burrow in deeper.

Growling in frustration, he jerked his mobile from his pocket, and used the light from the screen to navigate his way through the hazardous detritus of abandoned construction on the roof.

No one was home, and it appeared that this whole trip had been a complete waste of time. He could have stayed in Oxford with Adam and sat around eating takeaway and watching videos on his phone.

He waved a hand at the door leading into the flat, and stumbled inside.

oOoOoOoOo

Scuzz stood atop one of the tables, thumping one motorcycle boot against the wood to keep time as he led the drunken bikers in a rendition of some song about bestiality and hedgehogs.

Yeshua sang along with the chorus, wedged in between two sweaty Hell's Angels, twice his size, one arm thrown over the shoulder of the man on his left, as he sloshed his beer in his swinging right hand in time to the song.

"BUT THE HEDGEHOG CAN NEVER BE BUGGERED AT ALL," Death intoned behind him, in a surprisingly sweet baritone, as he came in on the last line.

Yeshua spun to favor him with a grin. "Charon! Wher've ya ben? Bruiser and Gus was jus' tellin' me bout this time they got into a figh' with a kangaroo."

"IT IS TIME FOR US TO GO."

Yeshua turned around to look at Scuzz, who needed two of the others to help him down off of the table. As soon as they let go of him, he promptly stumbled over into the pile of haddock that still lay on the floor, twitching occasionally.

"Not sure he's safe to drive like that," Yeshua said.

"HARDLY A CONCERN."

oOoOoOoOo

After the play had finished, they had done The Ritz.

Crowley had informed the maitre de that it was their anniversary, on their way through the door and a bottle of Moet et Chandon had been sent to their usual table.

Aziraphale had remained very quiet, a perturbed look darkening his angelic features, while the sommelier popped the cork and poured their glasses.

"What's wrong, angel?" Crowley asked.

"I didn't know that it was our anniversary. I haven't gotten you anything." Aziraphale was the absolute vision of remorseful despair.

Crowley laughed. "It isn't."

"It isn't? But you said…"

Crowley waved a hand, still chuckling. "I just wanted the good champagne."

"Oh, _Crowley_," Aziraphale said disapprovingly.

"Well, it's been six thousand years. I'm sure it's the anniversary of something. What's today? May the 11th?

"The twelfth."

Crowley searched his memory. "We were at that wedding in 1191," he suggested finally. "King Richard the 1st and wassername. The French girl who never actually came to England. Berginaria? Bergaria? Bulgaria?"

"Berengaria," Aziraphale said, "of Navarre."

"Well, it's _their _anniversary anyway," Crowley said. "And, actually, wasn't that the night you finally agreed to The Arrangement?" He brightened. "It was! They were off to the crusades, and Upstairs wanted you to tag along—help with the forceful conversions, and retake the Holy Land. You got _really _drunk, and let it all out. Maudlin, and weeping into my doublet all night. Said you couldn't possibly stand another year watching blood spill in the sand. And I said, I didn't mind. I could take care of it for you, only they want me to do a bit of messing about with the new Pope, and I can't exactly walk into Vatican City like I'm taking a stroll in the garden."

Aziraphale smiled his soft, happy, smile. "I guess it sort of is our anniversary then," he said, raising his glass. "To old arrangements and new ones."

Crowley raised his own glass to toast, smirking at the angel.

Just before the glass touched Aziraphale's lips, he had a sudden, reckless, and ridiculous, and wonderful idea. He snapped his fingers, and it was done. No taking it back now.

Aziraphale nearly choked on the ring.


	15. Chapter 15

Scuzz swerved unsteadily on his bike beside them, and just watching him was starting to make Yeshua feel queasy, but he seemed to be enjoying himself as he whooped and hollered with pleasure—the cool night air blowing his hair back.

They rode slowly, the motorway nearly deserted at this time of night, but Yeshua clung tightly to Death's waist anyway, as each bump and dip in the road made his head spin.

"Shouldn't I confess or something? Last rites?" Scuzz asked over the rumble of the engines.

"IF YOU THINK IT WILL DO ANY GOOD. WE DO HAVE THE CHRIST WITH US. YOU MIGHT AS WELL GIVE IT A TRY."

Yeshua groaned, but he tried his best to listen as they slowed even further, and Scuzz listed off his multitudinous transgressions.

oOoOoOoOo

Aziraphale coughed and wiped his mouth with his napkin as he stared down at the wet ring of metal in the palm of his hand. "Crowley," he asked uncertainly, "is this what I think it is?"

Crowley rubbed the back of his neck and downed his glass of champagne. "It could be? I mean, if you wanted to… It was a sort of a… spur of the moment thing. It's just… we were talking about anniversaries, and weddings, and all that, and I just thought, well… Might as well make it official, you know? We don't have to. It doesn't really change things. 'S just a piece of metal. After six thousand years-"

"Yes!" Aziraphale cut him off abruptly, and then pinked. "I mean. Like you said, it doesn't change anything, but it would be nice… to make it official."

Crowley tried his best not to look as ecstatic as he felt, and failed miserably. "Cor' yeah. Great."

"It is an odd way to go about it though," Aziraphale said. "You might have put a bit more thought into it."

"Are you seriously complaining that my proposal wasn't flashy enough?"

"Well, I-"

"That's traditional, that is. Ring in the champagne glass. How much more romantic can you get?"

Aziraphale just looked at him for a moment, all ruffled and indignant with a faint hint of guilt, and couldn't help but feel fond. He remembered all the long years they'd spent together: a rainstorm in a garden, a dinner of oysters in Rome, clanking about in suits of armor across the misty moors, crepes in Paris, champagne and chocolates in the newly opened bookshop, the rubble of a church during the blitz, drunken conversations about birds and mountains and sea mammals in the backroom, fights in parks, and in bandstands, and on street corners, long drives on rainy nights in the Bentley, a nanny and a gardener drinking wine beneath the stars with the smell of fresh cut grass in the air, standing wingtip to wingtip at the end of the world, marching blithely into Hell, and facing down God, and sitting at this very table, clinking glasses together.

Saying, "_To the world,_" but meaning, to _our _world, to _this, _to _us_.

Aziraphale smiled at him, his voice going soft. "No, you're right. It's perfect."

Crowley slid a finger under the rim of his sunglasses to wipe away a tear under the guise of adjusting the frames. Aziraphale looked down to slide the ring on, so that he could pretend not to notice. His own eyes were feeling a tad prickly. He really looked at the ring for the first time. Until then, the actual ring had been completely inconsequential to the matter at hand, but there it was on his finger: two intertwined bands, one black and one silver, nestled between them a blue stone with flecks of green.

And, there it was—their universe in a nutshell.

oOoOoOoOo

"Yeah, okay, good," Yeshua said quickly, before Scuzz could begin on another variation of the theme that started with, _I met a bloke in a pub_, and ended with, _I think his mates got him to hospital on time_. "Just, ah, sing three verses of the hedgehog song, and ask for forgiveness, and you're absolved." He tried to sketch the sign of the cross in the air, but Death hit a bump in the road, and it probably came out looking more like a map of the London Underground.

"YOU MIGHT WANT TO SING QUICKLY."

"Isn't it supposed to be Hail Marys?" Scuzz asked.

"If you'd rather," Yeshua allowed. "Go with that then."

"Are you sure that this guy is Jesus?" Scuzz asked Death.

"Yeshua," Yeshua corrected, yet again.

At the same time, Death said, "I'M SURE."

"I don't think I know how to say a Hail Mary," Scuzz said, after a moment.

"The words don't actually matter. You just have to say that you regret what you did, and then ask for forgiveness. As long as you mean it, all is forgiven. Everyone deserves a second chance."

"That doesn't seem right."

Yeshua loosened his death clutch long enough to shrug. "I don't make the rules."

"MIGHT WANT TO GET ON WITH IT."

"What? So I can just be an utter bastard my whole life, and as long as I say I'm sorry for it at the last minute, none of it matters, and I get to go to Heaven anyway?"

"That's why they call it a Hail Mary pass in American football."

"That hardly seems fair."

"I'D CHUCK THAT PIGSKIN NOW, IF YOU WANT A CHANCE AT MAKING A FINAL TOUCHDOWN BEFORE THE BUZZER."

Scuzz stared at the road for a long moment of soul searching, and when he spoke he actually did sound truly repentant. "I really _am _sorry. I don't know why I done the things I did. Sometimes I didn't know what I was doing 'til after, but mostly I knew that it was wrong. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a cowboy, but you can't jus' _be_ a cowboy, like you're applying for a job at Tesco. Then, I dropped out of school, and fell in with a rough crowd, and it all just sorta happened. I guess tha's just makin excuses though. Truth is, I'd give anything to go back and do it all over again. I wish to God that I had enough time left to really change my life. Be a better person. I'm sorry for being such a wanker."

Yeshua gave him a beatific smile. His next words were spoken in a whisper that, never the less, reverberated through the air, and drowned out the sound of the engines. "_I forgive you_."

A wave of warmth and peace overcame Scuzz. He had a sudden, vivid, sensory memory of, as a small child, skinning his knee, and running to his mother's knee with tears in his eyes: the warm smell of fabric softener and cigarette smoke as she held him to her chest and petted his hair, the soft tone of her voice as she hushed him, the safe feeling of her arms wrapped around him.

He never even felt the impact of the train.

oOoOoOoOo

"I suppose it will have to be an outdoor ceremony," Aziraphale said, as Crowley parked the Bentley by the curb outside the bookshop. "I mean, it isn't as though we'd be able to have it in a church."

"Hang on. Who said anything about a ceremony? I thought that we could just decide to be married and have done with it."

"We have to have a ceremony," Aziraphale said, "so that we can invite all our friends."

He got out of the car, leaving Crowley sitting there alone, mouthing the word _friends_ to himself.

Crowley got out and hurried after him to the front of the shop. "If we are going to do the whole shebang, I don't see why we can't have it in a church. You're forgetting, I'm not a demon anymore. No blistered feet. I can walk down the aisle just like anyone else."

"You can't walk anywhere _just like anyone else_," Aziraphale pointed out with a wry smile as he opened the door to gesture Crowley inside. "And, I hadn't forgotten, but we're supposed to be neutral. Getting married in a church would rather give the wrong impression, don't you think? We shouldn't be playing favorites. No, I think an outdoor wedding would be best."

"You know, you've really taken to this whole _Neutral Agents of Earth_thing like a duck to water. Considering all those years I spent listening to your sanctimonious preaching about angelic standards and the ineffable plan, you've really embraced your bastard side since we've been kicked out on our own."

Aziraphale huffed. "That's hardly any way to speak about your betrothed."

"It was a compliment, angel. You're not going to go all Bridezilla on me now, are you?" He eyed Aziraphale warily before starting up the stairs to their flat.

"I don't even know what that means."

"Women who turn into giant, raging, radioactive lizards and destroy Tokyo because of the stress of planning a wedding," Crowley explained, "Because if that's the case, we can just call of the whole thing. I know how you get."

"And how is that?" Aziraphale demanded as they topped the stairs into the flat.

"I just don't think that we need you going all avenging angel on the caterers. If you-" Crowley stopped abruptly.

"If I what?"

"Azazel," Crowley said.

"What does…" Aziraphale followed his gaze. To Azazel. Sitting on their couch. Frozen like a small mammal caught in the fast approaching headlight beams of a pre-war sports car being driven at improbable speeds by a madly cackling demon.

"Hey, Crowley," Azazel said, drawing the words out. "How've ya been? Is Jesus around?"

oOoOoOoOo

The last few train cars clattered by, and Yeshua finally saw what there was to see. It wasn't much. Scuzz's motorbike was one, large, smashed, and twisted lump of metal, and several thousand smaller bits, scattered along the tracks for a hundred metres or so. Scuzz himself was little more than a spreading stain.

Yeshua vomited into the scraggly grass on the side of the road.

Death didn't seem to be the least bit affected by the carnage.

If Yeshua squinted his watering eyes to where the specter of death stood, addressing the air, he could make out a sort of hazy shape that must have been Scuzz's soul.

After they had missed being hit by the train themselves by only a hairsbreadth, Death had calmly made a U-turn and pulled the bike over on the side, removing his scythe from where it was attached to the bike, while they waited for the train to pass. Now, Yeshua watched as the hazy _something_ seemed to flow into the scythe, and Death returned to the bike to snap his reaping implement back into its special holder.

"WELL, COME ON THEN, IT'S STILL A FAIR WAY TO OXFORD."

"What, that's it?"

"THAT'S IT."

"But…" Yeshua was at a loss. "He just died. You said that he was your friend."

"MORE OF AN ACQUAINTANCE REALLY, BUT I DON'T MAKE MANY OF THOSE IN THIS JOB, SO THEY TEND TO STAND OUT."

"Either way, he just died. Shouldn't we… do something?"

"IT'S BEEN DONE. I HAVE COLLECTED HIS SOUL. THE WEIGHING OF IT IS NOT MY BUSINESS."

"But," Yeshua swallowed, as his eyes were drawn to that long stain again. "What about the body?"

"WHAT BODY?"

"You know what I mean."

"THERE ARE OTHERS THAT WILL HANDLE THAT AS WELL."

"But, don't you care? He died. He wouldn't have even been here if it hadn't been for us, and if I hadn't given him absolution…, maybe he would have seen the train coming."

Death let out a put upon sigh, like wind rustling through dying flowers, left to rot, on a gravestone. "THE PLACE AND THE TIME ARE NOT FOR ME TO DECIDE. ALL MORTALS DIE. THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM MORTAL. WE DID WHAT WE COULD FOR HIM. HE GOT BETTER THAN MOST. HE KNEW IT WAS COMING. YOU GAVE HIM YOUR FORGIVENESS. MORE THAN THAT IS BEYOND THE POWERS OF YOU OR I."

"Well," Yeshua said, "You maybe, but not me." He looked at what was left of Scuzz. "I could-"

"NOT THIS AGAIN."

"I've done it before. Lazarus-"

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH PAPERWORK THAT CAUSED?"

"What is that compared to a man's life?"

"IT ISN'T A MAN'S LIFE THAT CONCERNS YOU. IT IS HIS DEATH. HE HAD HIS LIFE. IT'S OVER NOW. THAT'S THE ORDER OF THINGS. YOU HEARD HIS CONFESSION. HE WAS AN INTERESTING CHARACTER, TO BE SURE, BUT HE WAS NOT A GOOD PERSON. SAVE YOUR MIRACLES FOR SOMEONE WHO DESERVES THEM, AND LEAVE ME OUT OF IT. YOU'VE HIT YOUR QUOTA FOR RESURRECTIONS. NO MORE ZOMBIES."

Yeshua sighed. He was right of course, but knowing that on an intellectual level, and seeing the gristle and gore that, moments before, had been a thinking, breathing, human being, were really two very different things.

"Fine," he said, finally, turning away. "No more zombies." He walked over and took his seat behind Death once more. "Do you think it helped? Our Hail Mary?"

"WOULD IT BE RIGHT IF IT DID?"

"Everyone deserves a second chance," Yeshua muttered, as the engine started, and Death sped the bike away from the crossroads.

oOoOoOoOo

Aziraphale was making tea.

He wasn't entirely sure how it had happened. One moment he was making wedding plans, and then Lucifer's concubine was sitting on his couch, acting perfectly pleasant, and the next thing he knew, he was offering tea and biscuits. Instead of bursting into a demonic aspect and starting a ruckus, Azazel had simply accepted, quite graciously all things considered. And now, Aziraphale was making tea, and Crowley was catching up on all the gossip that he'd missed in Hell since his dismissal from the demonic rank and file.

"Promoted to what?" Crowley was asking as Aziraphale returned to the sitting room with the tea tray. "Chief Arse-Kisser?"

"That's still my job," Azazel said with a little smirk, snatching one of the biscuits from the tray and taking a pointed bite.

Crowley clearly saw his opening and pounced on it. "Yeah, but you're up here, aren't you. Who's filling in while you're gone?"

Azazel's smirk fell away in an instant. "No one. What do you mean? Do you know something?"

Crowley affected a shrug. "Well, it isn't as if the two of you are exclusive. I mean, he wouldn't be sending you up here to tempt Yeshua, if that were the case. And, well, he's the Prince of Darkness, isn't he? Ruler of Hell, leader of the rebellion, none of us would have Fallen in the first place if not for him, and it isn't like he's hard on the eyes. I'm sure he has demons lining up to fulfill his needs while you're away."

"It isn't like that," Azazel said, though he sounded uncertain. "It's only ever been me."

"Well, of course, anyone can see why you're his favorite, but you've always been available before. You've been gone for a week now. You can't just expect him to twiddle his thumbs."

Watching Azazel's face while Crowley worked on him, Aziraphale couldn't help but feel pity for the demon. He wouldn't have thought it was possible, but seeing the emotions flickering behind his eyes now, Aziraphale was starting to believe that Crowley might be right about him. Azazel was quite likely in love with Lucifer. Aziraphale had simply assumed that Crowley's capacity for love was a symptom of spending too much time on Earth. It was like their respective Head Offices had said—they'd gone native. But Azazel hadn't walked the Earth since Alexander the Great was conquering his way through most of the known world. This had nothing to do with humans, and it wasn't simple lust either. Aziraphale could still sense love, and it was coming off the incubus like a maiden aunt's perfume at a wedding reception. But, if Azazel and Crowley both had the capacity for love, what did that mean for the rest of the demons? If they could feel love, than surely they were capable of any of the Seven Heavenly Virtues.

Aziraphale handed Azazel a cup of tea, not feeling nearly as sanguine about Crowley's plan to manipulate him as he had before.

"Thank you," Azazel said as he accepted it.

"You're quite welcome." Aziraphale hadn't missed the show of gratitude either.

"Anyway, I really just need to see Jesus so that I can get this taken care of, and get back."

"I'm afraid that he isn't here," Aziraphale said, kindly.

"Death picked him up around seven. I don't think he'll be back tonight."

"Death?" Azazel asked. "You mean Charon?"

Crowley nodded.

Azazel frowned down into his teacup, muttering in a low voice, almost to himself. "_Necrophila_? How am I supposed to… That's… That's _disgusting_."

"I don't think," Aziraphale started to say, but Crowley made a sharp gesture at him, and he fell silent.

"Right?" Crowley asked. "I mean, even an incubus has to draw the line somewhere. If it were me, I'd never put up with it: working all the hours Satan sends, then clocking in the overtime whenever Old Splinterfoot wants a good horning. It's hardly fair of him to expect all that. I mean, when was the last time he took you on a nice vacation? When was the last time you even had a day off?"

Azazel's frowned deepened, and he still spoke into his cup. "I guess I had that maternity leave twenty-five years ago, but that doesn't really count." He looked up abruptly, anger plain on his face. "And now he sends me to Earth and thinks he can just replace me with the first demon that comes knocking?"

"If it were me, I think I'd give him a good bollocking."

Azazel frowned. "I hardly think he deserves that after what he's put me through this week."

"A piece of my mind," Crowley clarified, for the idiomatically deficient in the room. "Tell the truth and shame the Devil."

"Give the Devil his due," Aziraphale put in.

"Yeah," Azazel said. "I'll _do _him, all right. Give him a _piece_. A piece he won't ever forget. I've been doing a lot of research this week. I could teach him a thing or two about discipline and delayed gratification."

"Sure," Crowley said. "That isn't exactly what I meant, but whatever works."

Azazel set his cup down, untouched, but thoroughly scowled into submission, and rose to his feet—the picture of a demon on a mission of vengeance. "Thank you both for looking after Adam. Please let him know that I will be in touch soon," and with that he was off—through the flat and up the stairs leading to the roof.

"Did he say maternity leave?" Aziraphale asked.

"_Yeah,_" Crowley said, turning it into a hiss.

"Twenty-five years ago, that would be…"

"_Yeah_."

"Do you think we should…"

"Nope," Crowley said. "I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole."

"Right," Aziraphale agreed. "I suppose it isn't any of our business, in any case."


	16. Chapter 16

Adam had fallen asleep on a pillow of textbooks, and he had a sheet of a4 stuck to his face when he startled awake to the sound of knocking on his door. He brushed off the paper and accompanying saliva as he rose groggily to his feet and went to answer it.

"Hey Adam," Yeshua said, when he opened the door, sounding down-trodden.

Death loomed over him, making him look like some miscreant teenager being returned home by the authorities after a bit of light vandalism.

"HE'S HAD AN EXENTFUL NIGHT," Death said, completing the tableau.

"You'd better come inside before any of my neighbors see you. They've gotten an eyeful of Azazel this week already. Grandma only knows what they think I have going on in here," Adam said.

"I DON'T ENVY YOU YOUR FAMILY," Death said, helping Yeshua in through the door.

The adrenaline of Scuzz's demise, that had given him some momentary clarity, had worn of, and he was once more drunkenly stumbling through the world.

"YOU MIGHT WANT TO GET THIS ONE A BUCKET," Death advised as he deposited Yeshua onto the couch.

"What's wrong with him?"

"WE STOPPED OFF AT A BIKER WAKE ON THE WAY HERE."

"A wake?" Yeshua asked. "I didn't know that you stuck around for the funeral services."

"THIS ONE WAS PREVENIENT."

Adam raised a brow at him before going to the cupboard under the sink for a scrub bucket. He got it to Yeshua just in time for the Son of God to do his patented impression of a spitting camel.

"Well," Adam said, standing awkwardly across from Death while Yeshua retched. "Thanks for dropping him off, I guess. Do you want a cup of tea or something?"

"I NEED TO GET BACK TO WORK."

"Nothing certain but death and taxes? My dad is an accountant; he likes that one, but I know a few idiots who manage to avoid both."

"IT'S A DIRTY JOB, BUT SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT."

"I'm just glad it isn't me."

"YES. NO ONE LIKES THE TAXMAN."

Adam snorted. "More vacation time though."

"IF YOU HAD DONE YOUR JOB, I WOULD HAVE RETIRED A DECADE AGO."

Adam clenched his fist. "I don't see why everyone keeps expecting me to apologize for _not_ destroying the planet. Sorry, not sorry."

"I SUPPOSE I SHOULDN'T EXPECT EMPATHY FROM THE ANTICHRIST," Death said, and then he was gone.

"You're actually friends with that bastard?" Adam asked Yeshua, in a tone of disbelief.

Yeshua shrugged. "We play chess, but he's a horrible cheat," he said, and then he was retching into the bucket again.

oOoOoOo

Azazel ranted all the way through Hell. The other demons were used to ranting. It was all part and parcel of the whole eternal torment gig. But, typically it was the tortured souls doing the raving, and not one of the High Dukes, so Azazel garnered more than a few curious looks.

He had worked himself up into a frothing rage by the time he burst into Lucifer's bedroom. It had never been _their_ bedroom, despite the fact that they were the only ones who ever used it. Technically, Lucifer was the only resident of Hell that even had a bedroom, and it wasn't for sleeping. Evil never slept.

After Crowley's suggestion of just what his lover might be getting up to in his absence, Azazel had all kinds of scenarios running through his head. The worst of them, and least likely, involved Hastur and the leather pinny.

So, he wasn't expecting to interrupt anyone's restful slumber when he barged through the door. But, that's more or less what happened. Lucifer rose groggily in the big bed and blinked at him a few times before smiling.

"Darling," he purred. "I wasn't expecting you back so soon."

"_Clearly,_" Azazel said tersely. "What's the meaning of _this_then?" He'd been gearing up for a fight the whole trip over, and his brain hadn't quite rerouted itself after _not_ finding Lucifer in flagrante delicto.

Lucifer blinked again. "Well, there isn't much to do on my off time, with you gone. I've been indulging in a bit of sloth. I thought that I'd give sleeping a try. I haven't quite decided if I like it yet."

"Oh… _sleeping_, is it?" Azazel asked sarcastically. He was still struggling to find his equilibrium. He was sure that he was supposed to be angry about something, but he'd been so thrown at finding Lucifer peacefully sleeping in what had only previously been a temple to carnal lust, that he was having a hard time remembering what exactly he was supposed to be angry about.

"Where's Jesus?" Lucifer asked. "I think we should wait a while to see if God comes begging to have His son back. If not, we could stick him in the Second Circle for a few decades to soften him up, and then offer a deal."

"I… I don't have him," Azazel admitted.

"What?" Lucifer frowned. "Why are you back then?"

Azazel hedged. _Tell the truth and shame the Devil,_ he reminded himself. "I don't want you having sex with any of the others. You're mine."

"_Having_… With _who?_ What the blessed Heaven are you on about?"

Azazel took a deep breath. "If you want to keep me, freely and willingly, then it has to be _only_ me."

"_Only you?_Who would I_… What?"_

"I won't be just some convenient fuck, anymore. And, I don't want to work the Second Circle either, or go around seducing any mortals that you have your eye on. If you want to throw me over for Beelzebub or Hastur, then… that's it for us."

"You don't want to… What? _Hastur__?_" The name came out in a disgusted whimper.

"And, I want Adam to know the truth," Azazel added.

"The truth about what?" Lucifer asked.

"That I'm his mother."

"But, you aren't."

"Oh, so you can keep demanding that you're his father, but I have to roll over and let some mortal woman take my place?"

"I don't mean," Lucifer floundered. "It's just… he isn't like a mortal child. It isn't eggs and sperm. He's a part of my spirit given form."

"And who gave him form?" Azazel demanded. "I seem to remember nine months of being absolutely miserable."

"So do I," Lucifer muttered under his breath.

"Then, after all that, you just took my baby away and gave him over to Hastur and Ligur to foster out to a couple _mortals_."

"He wasn't your," Lucifer started, but he recognized the look of rage burning in Azazel's eyes, and knew better than to finish that sentence. He threw back the covers on the bed and climbed out. "That was part of The Plan. I didn't have any choice in the matter."

"Seems to me like you were all about _choices_ back when we were rebelling."

"That was… different."

Azazel scoffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Darling," Lucifer said, "_Beautiful_." He put his hands out in front of him, placating. "Azazel, _please_. Just calm down for a moment. What's bringing all this about?"

"Don't you try to sweet talk me. I won't have it. I deserve better."

"You deserve _everything_. Just tell me what you want and I'll give it to you." Lucifer's voice was soft and pleading.

"I've told you already."

"Tell him, then," Lucifer said. "That isn't up to me to do. Unless you want me to tell him for you? I will. You know he doesn't like me much, but I'd do it anyway, if you want me to. Though, I warn you, he's not going to be happy about it; you know how sensitive he is about things like that. As for the rest of it, I've never laid a finger on any of the others, especially not _Hastur__._Well, in wrath I guess, not in lust. I save that sin only for you. You must know that by now."

Azazel looked away, biting his lip. "I… I want more than that."

"More? What else can I give you? I've shared everything that I have."

"_Love_," Azazel said in a whisper, and Lucifer recoiled. "Love," he said it again, louder this time. "LOVE," he advanced on Lucifer, grabbing him by the lapels of his silky, pinstriped, pajamas. "Don't tell me you can't. We were angels once, and all we knew was love. And, I loved you with a burning passion that meant that I would follow you anywhere. I _Fell_ for you, and the burning lake of sulfur never burned so hot, or so brightly, as my love. So, don't tell me that you can't feel it. Don't tell me that all you have in your blackened heart is lust. Don't you _dare_spite me just to spite God. I. Deserve. Better."

Azazel's eyes were wild, and Lucifer was frozen in his grasp. "Yes," was all he said.

Azazel narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Yes, what?"

"That. All of it. _Feelings._"

"Say it then."

"I don't…"

"Say it."

Lucifer cleared his throat. "I love you," he said in a hoarse voice, and it was clear that it cost him something to admit it, but he stood a little straighter and said it again, with more confidence this time. "I love you. But, if you think I was entertaining _Hastur_ in my bed while you were away, then I think that time on Earth has done something to your head."

Azazel released Lucifer's lapels and smoothed out the wrinkles, smiling. "It's possible."

"Are you going to tell me what brought all this about, now?" Lucifer asked.

"Just some things that Crowley said."

"_Crawly_," Lucifer gritted out between clenched teeth, wrath in his eyes.

"It's a good thing that he did. I never would have managed this conversation, if I hadn't been so angry with you. We could have gone on this way for eternity."

"What was wrong with that? I was perfectly happy with the way things were," Lucifer grumbled. "There's nothing wrong with lust."

Azazel gave him a patronizing look at his word choice, and Lucifer backpedaled.

"There's nothing _unpleasurable_ about lust. I suppose you mean to live a life of celibacy now that you're giving up temptation?"

Azazel favored him with the wicked smirk that had made Lucifer love him in the first place. "We could try making love," he suggested.

Lucifer scoffed in disgust. "That seems like a poor substitution for wicked debauchery."

"Shut up, and kiss me already."

oOoOoOo

Aziraphale looked around at all the cardboard boxes containing his books, while Crowley searched the cartons in the backroom for a decent bottle of wine, and lost some of the ebullience that had been bubbling in his chest since Crowley had proposed. A moment later, Crowley emerged with a bottle clutched triumphantly in his hand, and a self-satisfied smile on his face. The smile fell when he caught sight of Aziraphale's expression.

"I don't suppose there's any hope that your _dear friend_ will have this mess cleaned up now that he's off trying to work God's will on Adam," Aziraphale said. He let out a miserable sigh. "Maybe we should just wash our hands of it. Get out of the city, for a while, and leave it like this. We could buy a nice little cottage in the South Downs; take in a bit of the sea air."

Crowley's smile was back at that, but it had morphed into a mocking smirk. "And do what? Keep bees?"

"It was good enough for Holmes."

Crowley barked out a laugh. "Oh, no. I remember how outraged you were when they published that story in _The Strand_. I think I can recall your exact words; I had to listen to you harp on about it for long enough." Crowley put on a decent imitation of Aziraphale's voice. "The very notion that Sherlock Holmes would be satisfied with a sedentary life _in Sussex_, away fromhis city, keeping bees of all the ridiculous pursuits, is utterly preposterous. He wouldn't last three weeks without perishing from acute boredom. I don't care whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is fond of his characters or not; The Great Detective deserves a better ending than _that_. He's already killed Holmes off once, but this is a fate worse than death. At least the fall from Reichenbach had some poetry to it. This is just a slow demise into obscurity. I have half a mind to go give that man a good talking to." Crowley dropped the impression. "Well, London is as much our city as it was ever Holmes's, and I don't think you would make it the three weeks. I know I certainly wouldn't. We would both discorporate in self-defense from the boredom before a fortnight had passed."

"Oh, I don't know. I'm sure we could keep busy. You could keep a garden for the bees to pollinate, and I could… I could write a book," Aziraphale brightened. "And, learn to cook."

"We'd both be miserable and at each other's throats. You'd give us both food poisoning and complain that there weren't any decent restaurants. This is our city. London would fall without us," Crowley looked around at the boxes and let out a sigh of his own. "Yeshua will be gone in another week, and we'll have it all put right one way or another."

"Oh, I suppose you're right. It's a nice thought though."

"I have a better one," Crowley suggested. "Now that I've made you an honest woman, I should take you up to bed and have my wicked way with you."

"I haven't been a woman in a _very _long time, and I think you have to actually get married for that to count. A proposal doesn't _cut the mustard_, as they say."

"_No one _says that." Crowley laughed and shook his head. "Anyway, I have my ring on your finger. All that's left to do is to negotiate the bride price with God, and we'll be shaking the tent flaps in blessed union in no time. I think three goats and a chicken ought to do it."

"Three goats and a chicken?" Aziraphale demanded indignantly.

"I'd go as high as four goats."

"Well, if Heaven and Hell had any say in the matter, I daresay that I wouldn't even have to pay _one_ goat for you. Lucifer would just be happy to be rid of you."

"For our sake, I hope that isn't the case. We've already sent him the goat, and that's one package that I'd sooner not have returned to sender."

Aziraphale hummed in agreement. Though, given the choice, he'd take Azazel over Yeshua any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Satan's concubine was polite at least, and an utter delight when compared to the destruction that the Son of God left in his wake.


	17. Chapter 17

Yeshua had insisted on following Adam everywhere on Friday, citing that he was on a _mission from God—_like Dan Aykroyd in a black suit and a pair of Raybans. Adam made it through two classes of Yeshua stage whispering sarcastic comments about the origin of life on planet Earth, before his surrendered in embarrassed defeat.

"So, what are we doing now?" Yeshua asked, as Adam hurried him away from a lecture on The Relations of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon Man.

"I'm bringing you back to Soho," Adam asserted, staring at the floor so that he didn't have to meet the eyes of any of his classmates.

"Great. You can help me with the renovations, and we can talk some more."

"Fantastic," Yeshua muttered.

Out in the car park, the Citroen had just spontaneously transformed into the sort of white panel van that had a grate separating the driver from the rear compartment, and padded walls in the back. The lettering on the side read: A.Z. Fell and Co., Home for the Criminally Insane.

oOoOoOo

Lucifer had found that making love was pretty much the same as making lust- save that there was a lot more cuddling afterwards, and he didn't have any real objections to that. It was nice just being able to hold Azazel without any pressure to perform lascivious acts on his partner, and all the snuggling tended to lull him comfortably into a warm, lazy, state of slothfulness, so all his practice at sleeping was coming in handy.

He didn't love Azazel of course. Love was what sycophantic, devoted, angels felt for God. Love was what that arrogant bastard claimed to have, with a sadly disappointed look in his eyes, right before he cast you down. Love was fickle. Love was selfish. Love was what mortal minstrels sang a thousand songs about in taverns to trick other, naïve, young, humans into bed. Love was what poets waxed lyrical about when they were alone at two in the morning in their rented flats. I love you, was what corrupt businessmen told their mistresses before they went home to the wife and kids.

So, no, Lucifer did not love Azazel, but he could say it. He could say it a thousand times a day for the rest of eternity, if it was what Azazel needed to hear. His lips could form the words, but deep down in his being what he would mean was, "I will never forsake you."

Because, love was a poor cousin to what Lucifer felt for Azazel. He didn't love Azazel; he needed him the way that a fish needed water, the way that a plant needed sunlight, the way that God needed followers. Azazel made his wretched existence bearable. He had rebelled against God, and God had said, "I love you," and thrown him down into the boiling lake of sulfur, and Lucifer had dragged himself, broken and burned, out of the fire. He had thought, _there can never be any pain greater than this_, and then he had watched Azazel Fall after him, and realized his error. He'd watched as the fire seemed to swallow him up, and he had screamed out his rage and grief to the Heavens. But, when he helped Azazel out of the lake, and they had held each other close, as more of their number Fell, that was when he truly learned what two beings could mean to one another.

It wasn't _love_ he felt for Azazel; it was loyalty. There would never be anything that would cause Lucifer to cast him out the way that God had cast them out of His Kingdom. Azazel was as much a part of him as Adam was, and though he had sent him away, he had never cast him out, and never would.

They lay in bed now, Azazel dozing with his head pillowed on Lucifer's chest, and Lucifer ran his hands through that beautiful silver hair, and felt something that was closer to pain than pleasure, at the thought of everything Azazel meant to him. It was a hungry need to keep him always here, within the circle of his arms.

They had been angels once. Lucifer had been called The Morningstar, because he had been the most beautiful of all of them, but Azazel had been his Midnight Moon, his Winter Twilight. Azazel had stood at his side as they had faced down God, and Lucifer had thought that the other angels must surely be blind, if they did not see his radiance and hold Lucifer as the lesser beauty in comparison. The fall had changed them both, but it had not diminished Azazel's beauty; it had simply replaced that radiant light with a darker aspect—replaced the stars in his eyes with banked embers, and the halo of light around him with the glimmer of a forest pond in moonlight.

Lucifer had once given Botticelli a reprieve from eternal torment for long enough to paint a portrait of Azazel, and the result hung in pride of place in the study. It was a masterwork. If it hung in a museum it would be heralded as Botticelli's greatest achievement, but the mortal art critics could never have any idea of what a paltry show it was, for they would have never seen the real thing.

He stopped his stroking to bend in and leave a kiss on Azazel's perfect lips.

Azazel blinked up at him and let out a little moan, curling those lips into a wicked little smirk. "Ready for another go?" he asked. "I still have a few things new things I want to try."

"We'll try all of them, but first I have to go check on a few things."

"If after six thousand years, those idiots haven't figured out how to run things without us for a few days, we should hand the whips and chains over to the humans and let them give it a try instead for a change. From what I've seen, some of them could probably teach the demons working the Second Circle a thing or two."

"Undoubtedly," Lucifer agreed with a little smirk. "Nevertheless, this cannot wait."

Azazel frowned. "You're sending one of them up to take my place, aren't you?"

"Of course, if you want to try your hand at something other than sexual temptation and the punishment of lust, I'm happy to let you branch out however you choose, but the work still needs to get done."

"This isn't The Work. This is you holding a grudge. Let it go. Jesus Christ isn't going to be tempted into anything. That one has all the sexual desire of a wilted carrot, and he's completely devoted to his Father. It doesn't matter who you send; he isn't going to step a toe out of line. You might as well give it up as a bad job. He isn't doing any harm anyway, or any _goo,_ for that matter. From what I can tell, he's been spending all his time trying to convince Adam to give up his desire to dig up fake bones, and destroying Aziraphale and Crowley's flat. I wouldn't think that you'd object to either one of those things."

"No," Lucifer said, uncertainly. "However, this is hardly an opportunity that we can pass by. The Christ hasn't been within our reach in two millennia."

"And, I'm telling you, he isn't within our reach now. I couldn't tempt him. Crowley couldn't tempt him, and those two are thick as thieves. Who do you think is going to manage it? Some reject from the Seventh Circle, who thinks excrement is the sweetest perfume, and lizards make good accessories?"

Lucifer sighed and leaned back against the headboard in defeat. "I'd at least like to keep an eye on him."

"I can do that much," Azazel said. "I'll go back in a few hours. Just stop worrying over it and make them a _memorable_ few hours."

"Haven't I satisfied you enough yet? Declarations of love, mobility in the workplace, and multiple orgasms aren't enough for you?" Lucifer asked with a teasing smile.

"We've barely reached the double digits. A demon has to have standards, and with all that mobility in the workplace, I'm bound to have a lot of excess sexual tension building up."

"We can't have that."

Lucifer was flat on his back, shivering in anticipation, as Azazel slid into him, before he realized what had happened. If Azazel could tempt the Devil to his will, then Jesus truly must be a lost cause.

oOoOoOo

"_This_ is what you meant when you said that you were renovating the bookshop, and you really don't understand why Aziraphale wants your guts for garters?" Adam asked, frozen just inside the door to the shop.

"That's why I need your help," Yeshua said. "Dad doesn't want me doing anything that doesn't involve spending time with you, but I can't just leave it like this. So, what do you say to a little family project?"

"I'm studying paleontology, not architecture, or carpentry for that matter. It's a whole different type of hammer."

"I have faith in you," Yeshua said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"There isn't much of that in Paleontology either," Adam muttered.

Yeshua had noticed as much. When he'd asked if Adam and Eve had been Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons, Adam's classmates had just laughed at him, and the professor had gotten very red in the face. The whole car ride over had been a long lecture from Adam- explaining the difference between Paleontology and Anthropology, how they overlapped, and the differences between taking a joke too far and just being an indoctrinated idiot who believed everything that they were told despite evidence to the contrary.

He'd nearly had Yeshua doubting, but then he had brought up some guy named Charles Dawson and his discovery of the Piltdown Man. Apparently, this Dawson fellow had discovered the fossilized remains of some type of early human, one of these _cave-men_ Yeshua had been hearing so much about, at the turn of the last century. Except, some thirty odd years later the other anthropologists and paleontologists did a bit of investigating, and realized that he'd cobbled the whole skeleton together from bits and bobs of human remains, as well as those of an orangutan, and a chimpanzee. Which just went to show, as far as Yeshua was concerned, that this Dawson fellow got the joke. Humans had been imitating God since the beginning, and just because God was more thorough and convincing with perpetrating the hoax—well, that ought to be expected, all things considered. He had told Adam so, and it had lead to a whole other tirade about how false discoveries, and a publish or perish attitude, only served to discredit the entire field of Paleontology.

Yeshua figured that they didn't need much help- the bunch of bull-headed, evolutionists, and conspiracy theorists.

"What have you done up here?" Adam demanded as he reached the top of the stairs.

"Like I said, it's a work in progress. I can show you the plans in just a minute. I think it will all-"

"Oi," Adam said suddenly, cutting Yeshua off and spinning on his heels to face Yeshua coming up the stairs. "Again? _Again?_ For… fuck… For _Yeshua's_ sake, would you two put some bloody clothes on," he shouted over his shoulder. "I think we've all seen you both with your kit off enough by now."

"That's what you get for not ringing the bell," Crowley called back.

"You haven't got a bell," Adam shouted.

"You're the Antichrist, I imagine you could have thought of something," Crowley sniped back.

"You might have knocked," Aziraphale suggested, tersely.

Yeshua craned his neck to see over Adam's shoulder, where Aziraphale and Crowley were shimmying into their trousers. Adam glared at him for this little display of voyeurism, but Yeshua ignored him. He'd take his thrills where he could get them. If his Father was going to manacle his manhood in a chastity belt of righteousness, you couldn't blame him for at least looking.

"And after however many millennia you two have been around, you might manage to not act like a couple of randy teenagers every damned day of the blessed week," Adam continued shouting.

"Oh, come in," Aziraphale muttered. "We're decent."

"Hardly," Crowley said with a smirk, but they were both buttoning their shirts as Adam and Yeshua entered the flat.

"On the couch again?" Adam blustered. "You know Yeshua's been sleeping on that. I swear, this flat is like the set of the worst porn film ever made. Don't either one of you have an ounce of modesty."

"Demons don't go in for that sort of thing. I don't see any sense in developing hang-ups now." Crowley said.

"It never used to be a problem," Aziraphale added, doing up his bowtie. "It's your fault for giving Eve that apple, Crowley."

"Right, I grant humanity the gift of knowledge, and six thousand years later we're getting lectured by the Antichrist for having sex in the privacy of our own flat. Should've seen that one coming really."

"We're sorry to intrude," Yeshua said. "Adam was just going to help me with the bookshelves. We'll pop up to the roof, and you two can get back to it if you like."

"No," Adam amended quickly. "You can't. I'm staying in the city for the weekend. I'm going to try to help fix some of," he gestured around the flat, "_this_, but I'm putting a building-wide ban on sex until I go back to Oxford."

"Like Hell. We're on our honeymoon," Crowley said.

"No, my dear. That comes after the wedding. We've just been vigorously celebrating. And, you'd better be planning to take me somewhere tropical."

"What, so you can show off your bathing singlet?"

"You're the one that gave them the apple. One must maintain a sense of propriety out in public."

"Yeah, _one_, only one. In the whole wide breadth of the world, you are the one, single entity, left who has worn a bathing singlet to the beach in the last half century."

"Doesn't seem to me that your surfing costume was much different," Aziraphale huffed.

"That was a wetsuit."

"Hang on," Adam narrowed his eyes at them. "Are you saying that you're getting married?"

Aziraphale brightened immediately. "Oh yes, he asked me last night," he said, showing off the ring.

"Put it in the champagne," Crowley told Yeshua, proudly. "'S right romantic."

"I was rather hoping that you'd be my best man," Aziraphale told Adam.

"Your _what_? Me?"

"What do you say, Yeshua?" Crowley went on. "Want to stand up for me? You can get drunk and make a speech. I seem to remember you rather enjoyed that in the old days."

"I'd be honored," Yeshua said, grinning. "I love weddings."

"Adam?" Aziraphale pressed.

"Yeah, all right," Adam squeaked out. He looked like he was about to cry, though if this was due to joy, or the thought of all the impending disasters that awaited him as one of the best men at the wedding of these two ineffable idiots, was anyone's guess. His expression firmed as he looked back to Crowley. "You asked him _last night_? The middle of all this seemed like the best time to propose, did it?"

Crowley shrugged. "Caught up in the moment."

"Middle of all what?" Yeshua asked.

oOoOoOo

"Did you really need to ask your ex to be your best man?" Aziraphale asked, once Adam and Yeshua had gone up to the roof.

Crowley groaned. "Not this again. He isn't my ex- anything."

Aziraphale huffed. "Still, it's the idea of the thing. It's supposed to be bad luck."

"I'm pretty sure that having the Son of God at your wedding isn't supposed to be bad luck. I don't remember any superstitions that go: _If Jesus turns up at your nuptials, throw salt over your left shoulder and turn around three times, or it will rain, and the caterers will have miscounted the fish portions_."

Aziraphale rolled his eyes.

"We can ask Adam to see if his dad will let Wilde off for the evening, if you like—make things even."

"Oh, do you think he would?"

"Never has before, but it wouldn't hurt to ask, I s'pose." Crowley shrugged. "Or, it wouldn't hurt _us_, anyway."

Aziraphale frowned. "I do worry about him down there. You don't think the demons are too hard on him, do you? He's such a gentle soul."

"Naw. I'm sure they only use the _warm_ pokers on him."

Aziraphale frowned. "You're being sarcastic aren't you?"

"Who, me?" Crowley put his hand to his chest in a gesture of hurt pride. "Never. I'm sure they're treating him like a king- Edward II, that is."

"That's nasty, Crowley," Aziraphale said, disapproving. "Just mean, and unnecessary. I've told you how I feel about that."

"Right," Crowley said, mollified. "Sorry, angel, really."

"You ought to be." Aziraphale said, and Crowley started walking away. "Where are you going?"

"You heard what Adam said; I'm going to take a cold shower."

"We don't have a shower."

"A cold bath then."

"It smells of piss and burnt plants in there," Aziraphale warned him, wrinkling his nose.

"That ought to help," Crowley called over his shoulder.

"The talk of anally inserted hot pokers didn't do for him," Aziraphale muttered. He looked down. "Did for me just fine."

oOoOoOo

"What exactly are we doing here?" Adam asked, looking around at the scattered piles of boards on the roof, while he watched Yeshua nail two of them together. "I told you, I don't know the first thing about any of this."

"This is a hammer." Yeshua held up the hammer. "This is a nail." He held up the nail. "You put the nail on the board, and you hit it with the hammer." He demonstrated.

"You aren't very good at this, are you?" Adam accused. "That's the real reason that you went with the whole messiah gig, isn't it? You're just a rubbish carpenter."

"Just don't get your hand between the wood and the nail," Yeshua advised. "I can't begin to tell you how much that smarts."


	18. Chapter 18

Carpentry lessons with Yeshu were… an _experience_. The plans were written in a language that Adam didn't understand; he wasn't sure if it was Aramaic, Hebrew, or just plain old Latin, but it was all gibberish to him. The numbers were familiar at least, metric and not cubits or _whatever_, but Yeshua's handwriting was so bad that the 9s and the 4s were completely indistinguishable, and most of the 1s looked like 7s. The drawings were rough and not even remotely to scale. They might as well have been building an ark for all that Adam could tell from the pictures.

In the end, he was relegated to fetching various tools, and holding boards while Yeshua screwed, glued, or nailed things together. He was also tasked with going down into the flat to fetch bottles of beer from the refrigerator. Aziraphale gave him nervous and concerned looks every time he stepped foot in the flat, and demanded to know how everything was going. Since Adam didn't have the vaguest idea, he just shrugged his shoulders and fled with the bottles. They drank a lot of beer while they worked, and it helped ease Adam's irritation a bit, so that he started to enjoy what they were doing, but he worried what the impact of the alcohol might be on the finished product.

It also really made him need to pee, but since Aziraphale and Crowley had gotten rid of their toilet, this involved leaving the building to try to find a loo in a pub or café that he could use without getting hassled about it too much, and Adam had been trying to put it off for as long as possible.

Finally, he couldn't hold his water any longer, so when Yeshua finished clamping the pieces Adam was holding, he stood, stretched out his back and said. "I need a piss. Guess I'll try that pub round the corner, or have you been using the café down the block? We should really put in a toilet while we're at it. Just because _they_ don't need it, shouldn't mean that we have to suffer."

"Actually, I could use some help filling up the empty pots. Crowley sure did have a lot of plants."

Adam paused longer than was probably necessary, thinking over this statement to see if there was any sense in it, before he said, "What?"

"Dad called. He has a bit of a temper when I don't do what he says. He got a little angry, started yelling, and torched the whole lot."

"Yeah, I know that. The whole flat smells like Crowley's been cooking again."

"Right," Yeshua grinned. "Anyway, I've been trying to fill them back up for him, but there are so many, so I could use the help. If you need a wee, just go in one of the empty pots, and do the flower trick."

"Flower trick?" Adam asked, pretty sure that he wanted this conversation to stop, pretty sure he should just go use the loo at the café, and maybe get a muffin while he was there.

"You haven't tried the flower trick?"

A few minutes later, Adam was standing next to the bathtub, watching Jesus Christ piss on the charred remains of a ficus.

"I'm not comfortable with any of this," Adam said.

"Just watch."

"You're one of those funny uncles that kids are supposed to watch out for. This is really not cool."

"Are you paying attention, or just running your mouth again?"

"That's quite the Christ-like attitude you have toward your fellow man," Adam said, sarcastically.

"There," Yeshua said, shaking himself off. "See, it's easy."

A new ficus was rising up from the ashes, like the proverbial phoenix, to take the place of the old one.

"I find it really ironic that rabbi means teacher."

"What do you mean?"

"This is like the carpentry all over again. You didn't explain anything. You pissed in a pot, and now there's a plant growing there. Cool. Great. Teach everyone to do it, and you'll have solved London's sewage and smog problems in one, but I've taken a piss quite a few times over the last twenty-three years, and I've never caused any plants to grow, at least not any faster than a good watering would've accounted for, so if you're expecting me to get my cock out and make a garden, I'm going to need a little more to go on."

Yeshua shrugged. "I usually just pee and think about what I want to grow."

"Right," Adam said. "I feel like you could have explained that without the demonstration."

Yeshua just shrugged again, and Adam gave him a narrow-eyed look.

"I think Azazel might have been right about you. You're obviously a sexual deviant."

"Not as long as Dad has anything to say about it," Yeshua muttered. "I thought you had to pee."

"I do." Adam started to unbutton his trousers. "Well, look away at least. That's common urinal etiquette, you creep."

Yeshua rolled his eyes, but he turned his back to Adam. "Well," he asked after a few moments of silence.

"Shut up," Adam snapped. "I can't do it with you lurking there."

Yeshua started to hum.

"That isn't really helping."

"Do you want me to turn the tap on?"

"Just shut up so I can pretend that you aren't standing there."

Yeshua stood silently, looking up at the ceiling and waited what seemed like an unnecessarily long time, before the silence was broken by the sound of urine hitting the dirt in one of the flower pots.

"It isn't working," Adam said.

"Are you thinking about a plant?"

"Yeah."

"You just have to _really believe_in the plant."

"Believe in the plant," Adam repeated, just as his stream sputtered out. He looked into the empty piss-damp pot and felt a pang of disappointment. "This is stupid. Just because you can do it, doesn't mean that I can." He put himself away and did up his trousers.

Yeshua turned around and looked at the empty pot. "Close your eyes and think of the most perfect plant you can imagine. Picture every leaf in your mind."

Adam scrunched his eyes closed and did what he was told. Slowly, ever so slowly, a plant began to sprout from the wet dirt. As it rose, it sprouted thin needle-like leaves that grew and fell off, leaving behind scaled indentations in the spongey, vascular trunk. It reached a height of around a metre, before its upward growth stopped. A canopy of leaves sprouted from the top, like a palm tree, with small cones budding from the tips.

"What kind of tree is it," Yeshua asked. It didn't really look like anything that he'd ever seen before.

Adam opened his eyes and grinned. "It isn't technically a tress. It's a lepidodendron," he said. "They went extinct about 300 million years ago. We have some fossils back at the museum that I could show you." Adam reached out to run his fingers over the tips of the leaves.

"You made a dinosaur plant?"

"These predate the dinosaurs actually," Adam said. "They must be from Grandma's plant joke phase. Because, that makes total sense; fake plants are hilarious." Adam turned on his heel and left the room.

oOoOoOo

"You can do the wedding flowers of course," Aziraphale was saying, "and we can both order new tuxedos from that nice little tailor shop on the high street."

"Might as well have Yeshua do the flowers," Crowley said. "It's going to take ages to rebuild my collection after God's little phone call."

"Maybe we could get the Dowlings to give us some cuttings from their rosebushes. They were always ever so lovely."

Crowley scoffed. "Roses? I think we can do better than roses."

"What's wrong with roses?"

"They're so ordinary. We can manage orchids at least."

Aziraphale sighed. "Well, I'll leave the floral arrangements to you. You're the expert."

"Yeah, well, if you'd remembered that back at the Dowling's, the garden wouldn't have been in such a sorry state. If you hadn't been giving those rosebushes a little dose of angelic miracle grow every morning, they would have succumbed to black spot within the first year."

"Oh, pish," Aziraphale said. "You took your appointment first. You could have taken the gardener position, but you wanted to reenact your own little demonic version of Mary Poppins."

"You have to admit, I looked dead sexy in that frock."

Aziraphale gave him a fond smile. "I liked the hair. It was a very classic look on you. Points for style, as always, minus several thousand for execution."

"It turned out all right in the end."

Aziraphale made a sound of agreement. "I would like to invite Warlock to the wedding. It may be a lot to explain, though."

Crowley considered for a moment. "Nanny Ashtoreth might have had a sex change," he suggested. "Some serious orthodontic surgery for old Brother Francis, and a shave and a haircut… might be able to pull it off."

"Do you think that he would even accept an invitation? We did leave rather abruptly. I've always felt a bit guilty about that."

"It was Armageddon. We had bigger things to worry about, and he was the wrong boy."

"As much as it complicated things, I was secretly relieved when it turned out that it wasn't him."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I tried not to get attached, really I did," Aziraphale started.

"You wouldn't have done it, would you?" Crowley asked. "If Warlock had been the Antichrist for real instead of some random child that you hadn't met yet, you never would have pulled the trigger."

"It didn't make any difference in the end anyway."

"No, but if it had… if it had been killing Warlock or killing everybody…"

"I don't know," Aziraphale said, his words tight and crisp. "And anyway, I didn't see you eager to do the job."

"You know how I feel about killing kids. But Warlock was a brat, if you had to kill one kid to save all of humanity, there were worse choices—Adam, maybe, for one."

"I didn't know that at the time though. It was easier when I didn't know him." Aziraphale fell quiet. "I suppose he's all grown up now, Warlock, I mean. He must be… well, the same age as Adam. Twenty?"

"Twenty-three," Crowley corrected.

"Mortal lives pass by so fast. He could be married or have children of his own by now."

"Let's just hope that he hasn't gone into politics like his father."

"Well now, there's an interesting thought," Aziraphale said with a kind of curious smile.

Crowley looked horrified.

"No," Aziraphale said quickly. "Not the politics, the paternity. We were so worried over which one was the son of Satan, that I never really stopped to think about it before, but Warlock must be Mr. and Mrs. Young's biological child."

"I s'pose so. What's your point?"

"Nothing really. It just puts the nature verses nurture debate into a new perspective."

"Adam didn't do that for you well enough when he stopped Armageddon?"

"Well, yes, but it makes me wonder just how badly our influence effected poor Warlock. All that mucking about with that child's psyche, and as soon as we discovered that he wasn't the Antichrist we left and never looked back."

"We had our hands full with just Adam, and I don't know what he was like before, but he's been in a mood ever since he learned who his biological father is. So, if you're making plans to lay that bombshell on Warlock's doorstep, you might want to reconsider. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. I'm sure he's happier not knowing."

"Maybe," Aziraphale allowed. "I wonder if Adam has put it together."

"_Don't_ tell him," Crowley commanded. "He has enough baggage without you adding some pseudo-brother into the mix."

"Yes, all right. You've made your point. Now where were we with the wedding planning?"

"Dinner," Crowley answered.

"Yes, well, I think the best thing to do would be to sample as many caterers as possible. And, none of that chicken or fish option nonsense. We should have a proper menu."

"I meant," Crowley said with a sigh, "that we were going to take a break for dinner. You know, I don't think most couples plan the whole wedding the day after they get engaged."

"There's just such a lot to do; no time to waste."

"You know, there are people you can hire to do all that for you. It's a whole industry these days. It isn't as though we need to worry about the money. We could just hire a wedding planner, and save the stress of it all."

"And miss out on the fun," Aziraphale said. He looked down at the array of bridal magazines laid out on the table. "Besides, I don't think I'd trust anyone else to do it right. Some of these themes are just atrocious. When did they decide to start sticking burlap on everything?"

"Whereas, I'm sure our wedding will be fashionably clad in tartan."

"Just a bit here and there for accent. Nothing too gauche. Oh, we could get matching bowties!"

Crowley drew in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out. Aziraphale just looked so excited, but he'd be damned, _again_, if he was going to wear a tartan bowtie at his wedding. "We'll see what they have at the tailors, angel," he said.

Crowley didn't care how many miracles it took, or if he had to resort to robbing the place at two in the morning dressed like a cat burglar, there wasn't going to be a scrap of plaid in that place when they went for their fitting.

oOoOoOo

"This actually looks like a bookshelf," Adam said, surveying their work.

"Yeah," Yeshua said, he was frowning, and he didn't sound pleased.

"What's wrong with it?" Adam asked. "It looks good to me." He rapped on the side with his knuckles. "Nice and sturdy." He slid the extended, moveable, shelf on the front from side to side. "This thing works great. It'll almost double Aziraphale's storage space. He'll be over the moon. He might even forgive you for destroying his shop. We just need to assemble the other ones, and we can put them in."

"Mhmm," Yeshua said, but he was still frowning.

Adam sighed. "Just spit it out. What's wrong with it? What did we screw up?"

"Well, when I drew up the plans, I was planning to build them downstairs in the shop."

"Yeah, so?"

"I didn't think about how we were going to get them down the stairs."

Adam looked at the large, four metre long, two metre high, bookshelf, and then over at the quite average sized door going down into the flat.

"Bollocks," Adam said.

"Bollocks," Yeshua agreed.


	19. Chapter 19

Through a combined effort of will, Adam and Yeshua managed to magically transport the finished bookshelf into its proper place in the shop, but they decided that it would be better to finish assembling the others down there, after they found it lying diagonally atop several boxes of Aziraphale's books. Fortunately, Crowley and Aziraphale had already left for dinner by that point, so Yeshua was able to hold the shelf mostly upright while Adam extricated the boxes to make a space for it, without them having to try to coordinate the action over Aziraphale's angry screaming.

Once they had the shelf in place and anchored, they could free up more space by getting some of the boxes unpacked and the books put in their places on the shelf.

"This is actually pretty great," Adam said. The extra shelf extension slid easily, even loaded with books. It could be slid from one side to the other to reveal the books on the primary shelf beneath. Adam was sure that Aziraphale would use it to hide his more precious editions, conveniently miracling the sliding mechanism to stick whenever customers wanted to browse—trapping whatever book they might be looking for behind it.

Really, it was perfect.

"Now that we have some of the books unpacked," Yeshua said. "It occurs to me that we're back to the problem of getting them all full of sawdust while we're working down here."

Adam groaned. "Well, I'm not packing them all back up again. We can throw some plastic sheeting up to minimize it for now, and keep Aziraphale from freaking out, and then we'll just will it all clean when we're done."

"We'll have to go to the hardware store again," Yeshua said, sounding like a kid on Christmas morning. Or maybe just like _him_ on Christmas morning; it was his birthday after all.

"We need to get something for dinner anyway," Adam said. "They could have asked us along if they were going out to eat somewhere."

oOoOoOo

Crowley leaned over in his chair, watching intently as Aziraphale first pierced the top of his chocolate lava cake with the shining tines of his dessert fork and then sliced into it with his knife.

Crowley did not, as a rule, particularly care for dessert on a gastronomic level. Aesthetically, though, the sight of the molten chocolate flowing, dark and sweet, through the perfect cut in the fluffy, lightly brown, cake, and dribbling out in a rivulet to pool on the plate, a sharp contrast of clean white porcelain and nearly black chocolate, was enough to set his heart racing.

Aziraphale sliced a dainty, bite-sized, piece of the cake away, spearing it delicately on the end of his fork, and dipped it into the liquid chocolate, leaving a little smear in its wake. He lifted the bite to his mouth, ever so carefully, so as not to drip on his well-preserved suit, and parted his lips. So enraptured by this simple act of eating dessert, he paid no heed to Crowley's intent stare as he slid the morsel into his mouth and wrapped his lips around the fork. His eyes fluttered shut in a moment of ecstasy, and he let out a pleased little moan as he slid the now clean fork out between pursed lips. His eyes opened again, lazy and heavy-lidded, as he ran his tongue over the little smudge of chocolate left behind on the plump curve of his lower lip.

Crowley found himself unconsciously mirroring the gesture, forked tongue flicking out just enough to brush his own lip, as he scented the faintest hint of chocolate on the air.

"This new patissier that they've taken on is a genius," Aziraphale said, as he cut off another bite. "He's added just the hint of something new to this, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It's almost," he paused to taste again, humming under his breath. "It's like a desert oasis, on a clear evening, under a sky full of stars—oranges still full of sunshine, and cinnamon, and the faint scent of jasmine, and spicy pepper, but just a hint, just a suggestion, just the memory."

Crowley coughed, and cleared his throat. "Oh, yeah?" He shifted his hips in his seat, and took a sip of his wine to steady himself.

"I think he must have added some kind of liqueur to the chocolate sauce," Aziraphale went on.

Crowley's eyes flicked back to the fork again as it made it sensuous trip from plate to angelic lips.

Aziraphale let out another little moan of pleasure as he slowly dropped the fork to his plate again and his eyes rolled up towards the ceiling. "Whatever it is, it's absolutely divine."

"Sinful," Crowley hissed out in an exhalation of caught breath.

Aziraphale turned his focus from his dessert to Crowley, for the first time since the cake had arrived, at the sound. His eyes widened in surprise for just a moment, as he took in Crowley's flustered appearance, and then he gave him a fondly exasperated smile. "Oh, don't look at me like _that_."

"Like what?" Crowley asked, shifting in his chair.

"Like it's either a good thing that this table is between us, or a bad thing that we're in public."

"How am I supposed to help it, when you eat like _that_?"

"Like what?"

"Like each mouthful might just tip you over the edge into public indecency."

"Oh, I do not," Aziraphale huffed. "I'm just enjoying my dessert."

"The way you enjoy your dessert makes dissatisfied, middle-aged, housewives tell their waiters, _I'll have what he's having_."

Aziraphale's entire expression was an eye roll. "You've just had a one tract mind for the last five years."

"Well, we have a lot of lost time to make up for," Crowley said, "but, trust me; I've been enjoying watching you enjoy your food for millennia now."

"Oh, _please_," Aziraphale said like he'd been paid a compliment that was obviously fabricated flattery, but he wore a pleased smile.

"See how he slips his fork between his lips," Crowley recited in a reverent whisper, "Oh, that I were a tine upon that fork, that I might touch those lips."

Aziraphale covered his face with his hands, not quite hiding the flushed tinge in his cheeks. "You are utterly ridiculous," came out in a muffled groan of embarrassment.

Crowley let out a hum of satisfaction. "We should order some of that chocolate sauce to bring home."

Aziraphale let his hands drop. "No! You heard what Adam said, and really, it isn't an unreasonable request."

"That wasn't a request. That was a tyrannical decree, dictating how we are allowed to behave in our own home," Crowley complained. "But, if home doesn't suit you, we could always go for a bit of a drive, find somewhere quiet to park the Bentley for a bit, while we steam up the windows."

"No," Aziraphale protested, laughing. "Never again, not after what happened the last time."

"If you see a parked car on a deserted, country lane, rocking on its wheels, with the windows fogged up, and you go banging on the glass with your torch, then you shouldn't be surprised by what you see."

"I don't think that it was what we were doing so much that surprised him, as you pausing mid-act to roll the window down and ask him if there was something he needed."

Crowley shrugged sinuously. "It seemed like it had to have been something of the utmost importance for him to be interrupting us."

"I imagine that he was expecting to find a couple of teenagers."

"Well, that'll teach him not to go banging his torch on the windows of any vintage Bentleys any time soon then, won't it?"

"Not in the car," Aziraphale repeated firmly, "but you do still have the Mayfair flat, and Adam _is_ looking after Yeshua."

"You make it sound like we've hired a sitter."

"For the _weekend,_" Aziraphale agreed, giving the last word an added emphasis.

The waiter included a generously sized container of chocolate sauce when he brought over their bill.

oOoOoOo

Crowley and Aziraphale never returned to Soho after their dinner on Friday night. When they hadn't turned up by late afternoon on Saturday either, Adam had tried calling Crowley's mobile. After half a dozen attempts over the period of a few hours, he finally got through.

He was told in no uncertain terms to, "Fuck off, and stop calling," and that if he had wanted Aziraphale and Crowley around, then he shouldn't have put a ban on sex while they were on their honeymoon.

Adam decided that, for once, he wasn't going to let himself be dragged into a conversation about their sex life, and didn't argue over what constituted a honeymoon and when it should take place on the whole marriage timeline. He simply told Crowley to have a nice time and ended the call.

It was all for the best really.

With the owners of the flat out of the way, and the use of a little divine and demonic magic, they were able to make remarkable progress. By the end of the weekend, they had installed all of the new bookshelves, returned the boxes of books to their proper places, given the shop a good dusting, made some interesting changes to the kitchen that would prevent Crowley from ever inflicting gastronomic torture on anyone ever again, gone through about a keg of beer in an effort to fill all the flower pots, and then finally installed a toilet. Adam was even starting to understand a few things about carpentry.

They celebrated with a couple of beers on the roof late on Sunday night.

"I suppose I should head back to Oxford in the morning," Adam said. "I don't suppose there's any chance that you'll stay here?"

Yeshua shook his head. "Nope, Dad says that I have to stay with you until I convince you to work with Lucifer." He brought the bottle to his lips, but lowered it again without taking a drink. "I suppose that I should try to do that."

"Don't waste your breath. Why don't you just tell Her that you've convinced me to get Her off your back. I don't actually have to run Hell until I'm dead, right? She won't know the difference."

"Have you ever tried lying to God?" Yeshua asked.

Adam frowned. "I hadn't thought of that. Sheesh. No wonder you are the way you are. How are you supposed to survive without lying to your parents? And she won't let you have sex either, what is that even about?"

Yeshua shrugged. "Not unless I get married anyway, and I wasn't allowed to get married when I was alive. It would have distracted me from my purpose."

"You have another week, right? We could absolutely find you someone to marry in a week. I'm sure there are websites for that sort of thing. We can get you a mail-order bride, or groom if that's your thing."

Yeshua seemed to consider it for a while. "And you'll agree to accept your destiny?"

Adam let out a long, exasperated, breath through his nose. "Look, Yeshua. I'm going to be a paleontologist. In another year, when I graduate, I'm hoping to get hired on at Oxford, and well, I'm the Antichrist, and I'm not above using a bit of my genetic gifts to get the job. It ought to count as a diversity hire anyway. The point is, I'm going to spend my life travelling around the world, digging up dinosaurs, studying fossils, and publishing the kind of papers that will uncover things about the prehistoric world that the scientific community could only ever dream of. At some point I'll work in a relationship, find a wife or a husband of my own, maybe a couple of kids. Then, when I'm old and grey, with a Nobel Prize, and a couple dozen new dinosaurs named after me, I'll die. Lucifer can have me, and we'll work it out then. Until then, I don't want to hear another word about it. I want a chance to live a normal life, without Hell hanging over my head. Okay?"

"So, you're not actually against the idea, you just don't want it to affect your life until it matters?"

"Of course, I'm against the idea. I don't want to go to Hell. Why would _anyone_ want to go to Hell? But, from what Grandma told me, it doesn't matter how good of a person I am, I get a one way ticket to the inferno when I kick it, either way. There's another argument for basic human decency right there. If Hell was really the only deterrent against evil, then I'd be out raping and murdering people right now- instead of helping fix my godfathers' flat, pissing out prehistoric forests, and drinking beer with the Son of God."

"You _are_ the Antichrist."

"Well, sorry for failing to meet everyone's expectations, but I don't have any desire to go around committing mass murder and destruction. I guess I was just raised better than that."

"If you're going to Hell either way, why not just agree and save yourself the argument."

"Because I don't like bullies," Adam said. "I don't like being told what to do. And, I don't like God's cavalier attitude with mankind. Do you know about even half the shit that happened before you came along? Floods, and plagues, and fire raining down from the sky? Not to mention what she did to the dinosaurs, and all the mass extinctions before that. It makes me wonder if there was a T-Rex Antichrist 65 million years ago, just thinking, _Fuck it, I'm sick of this. The carnivores eat the herbivores. The herbivores are destroying the plant life. Why not just destroy it all and start over? A nice little meteor ought to do it._"

"It was a," Yeshua started, in the tone that Adam had come to expect whenever he mentioned dinosaurs around any of his divine and demonic friends and family, but he never made it to the J-word. Instead, he stopped mid sentence, tilted his head to the side, and said. "Do you think there was a T-Rex Christ then too?"

"You're more like an Apatosaurus," Adam said, grinning.

oOoOoOo

Hell had only a vague sense of time. Technically, in Hell, it was always one time, and that time was _too late_, but they had adopted a 24 hour, 7 day week, schedule to make things a bit easier to manage. All the same, when you worked in constant darkness, lit only by the burning fires, it was easy to lose track.

The buzzers had been one of Crowley's ideas- great bellowing klaxons that went off at regular intervals. That was all well and good down in the pits. It gave the tortured souls the illusion of time passing. But, with eternity stretching out ahead of them, it wasn't time marching onward to some goalpost in the distance. It wasn't days marked on a calendar bringing them closer to the big red circle around any one date in particular. It was just time passing, days marked, onward and onward Forever and ever.

That kind of psychological torture had earned Crowley a commendation, and it was all well and good for down in the pits. It marked shift changes, and assignment rotations, the occasional period of downtime for the higher ranking demons, but hearing that klaxon go off abruptly when you were in the middle of taking a sip of brandy, or having your cock sucked by a silver-haired savant of the art, had lost its appeal very quickly, so Lucifer had simply decided that the siren clanging couldn't be heard within the bounds of the infernal residence, and so it hadn't.

So, that was how Azazel's intended stay of a few hours had stretched into a few days without either of them really noticing. In light of their new arrangement, when anything _new_ in Hell was of the utmost novelty, they really shouldn't have expected anything else, and Lucifer found himself reluctant to let Azazel go.

They'd moved their little private party to the conservatory. They often ended up here in their more romantic moments. Lucifer liked the way the air smelled here, sweet, and green, and full of life. You could almost imagine that you weren't in the deepest pit of Hell.

He had found a bottle of scented oil, and was rubbing it into Azazel's back while he thought over the situation. Azazel was dozing with his head pillowed in his arms, just a silent mop of silver curls attached to the long expanse of smooth, bronze, skin beneath Lucifer's palms. Watching his own hands glide slickly over the muscles was almost hypnotic.

He toyed with the idea of forgetting the whole plan completely. What did he want with the Christ anyway? He had his own son to worry about. But, then, that was the problem.

Adam was _always_the problem. No matter what he did, no matter what he tried, Adam seemed determined to hold his very existence against his father- as though Lucifer had any choice in the matter. There was a Christ, so there had to be an Antichrist. The Earth had been created and was meant to last six-thousand years, and then the Antichrist would be sent to Earth to start Armageddon, and the war between Heaven and Hell would begin. So maybe there had been a calendar counting down to that one date circled in red after all.

And, when the time had come, he'd just told Azazel that it was time for the Antichrist to be conceived, and Azazel had gone along with it with minimal complaint. They'd made the baby and given him over to be delivered through the appropriate channels. Everything had seemed to go to plan.

Then that day had come, some eleven years later, the one with the big red circle. The forces of Hell had been rallied. There would be a war—The War. Deep down, Lucifer hadn't expected that they could win. It was all supposed to be part of The Great Plan. It hardly seemed like God would have gone to all the trouble, just for Heaven to lose. But, he'd been ready for it all the same. Ready for the change, whatever it might be. Even prepared for oblivion, if that was how it worked out.

Only, Adam had thrown a spanner into the works, hadn't he?

Of course he had.

There Lucifer had been, ready to make his grand entrance, ready to rise up through the Earth to wreak unholy havoc on the Heavenly Host in the fields of Megiddo, when Hastur turned up to report that there had been a mistake with the Antichrist. The child Warlock Dowling, who Lucifer had been monitoring with pleased interest over the last eleven years, was not, after all, his son. Crowley had gone rogue, destroyed Ligur with holy water, trapped Hastur temporarily in some manmade prison, and then forcibly discorporated him by driving that car of his through the flaming sigil Odegra that was the M25. The Horsemen were riding hell for leather toward some airbase near Oxfordshire where his true son was beginning Armageddon.

It was a mess, of course, but a controllable one. He'd no sooner informed his generals of the change in venue though, when Beelzebub turned up in a frothing rage, and told him that Adam Young, the true Antichrist, was calling the whole thing off. Crowley and that angel coconspirator of his were somehow involved, and now Adam told them to all go home.

Lucifer was more confused and frustrated than angry at that point, but he decided to make his grand entrance anyway, so that he could explain things to the boy. But then, the little brat, drunk on his momentary power, had repudiated him and somehow managed to throw him back down. Lucifer didn't know whether to be enraged or impressed, and he'd settled on a combination of the two over the years.

Afterwards, there had been a mad scramble in the upper echelons of Hell's rank and file to pin blame on anyone other than themselves. As far as Lucifer had known, Crowley and Aziraphale had been executed for their traitorous conspiracy, and things had mostly gone back to the status quo.

Except, that left Adam—an Antichrist without an Armageddon, too human by half, and not at all interested in anything Lucifer had to say about any of it.

He'd tried to tell Adam that it wasn't his fault. It hadn't been his choice to create the boy to begin with. It hadn't been his choice to send him to Earth. That part had all been part of God's Great Plan. It certainly hadn't been his fault that Adam had been given to the wrong family. Lucifer had been checking in on Warlock Dowling, or at least paying attention to the reports Crowley was bringing in. He'd _taken an interest._ It just turned out that the stories he'd been hearing of the little Antichrist's first steps, first words, first day of school, first suspension from school, and all the other benchmarks of the development of a human child (or unholy, demonic, entity, destined to bring about The End) hadn't been about _his_son at all.

And, whose fault was that? Certainly not Lucifer's. Of course, why not blame him for everything? All the other evils of the world were laid at his doorstep. Had a mental breakdown and murdered your whole family? _The devil made me do it._ Poisoned a whole village? _It was Satan._ Cheated on your wife_? I'm dreadfully sorry__Sheila, but it wasn't my fault. The__Devil put impure thoughts in my head._

Lucifer never _made_ anyone do anything. On the rare occasions that Hell was even directly involved, it was only a matter of providing the means and the opportunity. Humans had to have the motive, and then decide to act on it. It was always a choice. That was the whole point.

In any case, he hadn't made the decision to abandon Adam, and Crowley was the one to blame for the fact that he hadn't been the least bit involved in his only son's life.

Yet, who comes waltzing down into Hell with Adam on the single occasion that Adam voluntarily enters his kingdom? _Crowley_. And then, God had decided that it would just be the most excellent of divine planning to give Crowley and his little angelic friend dominion over Earth.

And now, Azazel was making declarations of love, and he wanted to tell Adam the full extent of his involvement in the whole business, so that they could all be one big happy family. Lucifer would be lying if he said that the thought didn't hold some appeal, but he didn't have high hopes that Adam was going to receive news of the circumstances surrounding his birth with anything other than scorn. Azazel would be crushed.

He had to head this off somehow, and that meant talking to Adam before Azazel had the chance. However, Lucifer couldn't just go up to Earth anytime that he pleased. He wasn't allowed. There had to be balance. For Lucifer to go to Earth, it either had to be part of The Great Plan, or God had to be there too. So, he was reduced to working by proxy where the mortals were concerned. If he wanted to talk to Adam, then Adam had to come to Hell. He could use other means of communication of course, but this conversation wasn't likely to go very well, and he would rather have it in person.

The whole thing decided in that instant, he ran his hands from the nape of Azazel's neck to the little dip at the small of his back one last time, before he willed away any residual oil from his hands, and said, "I'm going to get us something to drink."

Azazel made a barely coherent sound of agreement, and Lucifer went to find Hastur.

If he couldn't go to his son, then Adam would simply have to come to him, and perhaps Hastur could do something about the Christ while he was at it. If temptation was off the table, a simple kidnapping would have to do.


	20. Chapter 20

By some miracle, Adam managed to convince Yeshua to let him go to class alone on Monday. Though, he did accompany him back to Oxford.

Adam was just getting out of class, when he caught sight of Hastur lurking behind a statue in the courtyard. Adam met eyes with him for only a moment, and then turned quickly to walk in the other direction. He hadn't taken more than a few steps, when Hastur was suddenly at his shoulder, smelling of poop and extreme halitosis.

"Your father wants to see you," Hastur said into his ear in a low growl.

Adam stiffened. "I have classes later this afternoon."

"They can wait."

"They can't, actually," Adam said. "Come back later."

"Now!" Hastur demanded.

Adam started walking again, turning back onto his original trajectory towards the car park.

"NOW, Adam."

"Piss off, Hastur."

It happened so quickly, that Adam didn't even register what was happening at first. The fire almost felt cold for an instant, but then pain shot out from his wrist, and Adam was throwing off his jacket before he knew what he was doing. As it went up in a blaze of flames, he threw it onto the ground and stamped on it, while other students looked on in confusion.

"Now," Hastur said again.

"Go to Hell," Adam shot back, as he turned away and continued walking, leaving his jacket smoldering behind him.

He held his back tense, as waited for a second attack. It was all well and good to try to act like a badass, showing weakness to a demon was never a good idea, but Adam was still reeling. None of them had ever dared to lay a finger on him before now, and he wasn't actually sure that he could handle Hastur in a direct fight. He'd never really used his powers in that way—not since the would-be Armageddon, and even then the widespread destruction had been more a side effect than any kind of direct attack on anyone.

Either because of the onlookers, or because Hastur had been stepping out of line to begin with, there was no second assault, and Adam didn't dare look back.

He was brought up short for a moment when he reached his parking space and found a World War II era Infantry Tank. It had sort of wedged itself between the hatchbacks on either side, and Adam guessed that a few door dents would be the least of the damage. He just stood there and stared at it for a moment. He hadn't made any kind of conscious effort to turn the Citroen into a battle tank, but obviously the altercation with Hastur had rattled him.

He only considered trying to take the tank down the road for a moment. He wasn't worried about people seeing him. His powers seemed to insulate him from that somehow. It wasn't that people didn't notice when Adam's car spontaneously turned from a battered '03Citroen C3 Pluriel into a fully armed and armored tank, or when his clothing randomly combusted while a weird looking man with solid black eyes, who stank like a sewer tunnel, yelled at him. It was just that they found reasons not to really worry about it. But, the thing of it was, Adam didn't have the foggiest idea of how to drive a tank.

So, Adam concentrated for long enough to turn the tank into a Lamborghini Huracan, and repaired the damage to the surrounding cars.

"Hey, Adam. How did you do on Professor Marchbank's test?"

Adam turned to see Marcia Peters, one of the other grad students in the paleontology program, arms full of books. His brain stalled for a moment, as he tried to shift his world-view back to a place where things like classes and test grades mattered to him.

"Uh, 98%, I think," he said.

Marcia shook her head. "I don't know how you do it. I'm barely hanging on, by my teeth, in that class. I'd love to have you in our study group, but I guess you don't need it."

"Uhmm, yeah, maybe next semester."

"Are you going home for lunch?" she asked. "I was going to catch the bus, but do you think you could give me a ride? My flat is just a block down from yours."

"Uh," Adam looked off towards the main campus, searching for Hastur again. He could see someone lurking in the shadows by the corner of one building, but he wasn't sure if it was Hastur or just one of the goth kids in the arts programs. He looked back to Marcia. She was cute: petite, a full head of wispy blonde curls, green eyes behind horn-rimmed glasses, and whatever she might say, she was smarter than almost everyone else in their classes. "Sure, just…I'm in a bit of a hurry."

"Okay," she got into the passenger seat, and Adam kept an eye on the maybe-goth, maybe-Duke of Hell, as he got in behind the wheel.

"You have a nice car," Marcia said.

"Yeah, thanks," Adam said, absently, as the Lambo roared to life, and he pulled out onto the road. "Just a minute, I need to make a quick call." He pulled up his contact list on his mobile and scrolled down to Crowley's name.

"Aren't you going to use hands-free calling?" Marcia asked, her tone clearly disapproving.

Adam grimaced, but he turned the bluetooth on as he sped around traffic. The line rang a few times, before Crowley picked up.

He sounded breathless as he answered with. "I _ungh_ thought I told you to stop calling me on my honeymoon."

"You aren't on your honeymoon! Put some clothes on and get to Oxford right now. Meet me at the museum."

"I'm a little busy at the moment. What did Yeshua do now? _Oh, fuck. Just there._"

"Get your dick out of Aziraphale's arse, and get in your car right now!"

"Wrong dick. Wrong arse," Crowley said and then made a little whimpering sound.

"Do I sound like I fucking care about sodding semantics right now?" Adam yelled, riding the shoulder to get around a motorbike.

Marcia made a squeak in the passenger seat.

"Hastur is here. He just set my jacket on fire. Says dad wants a chat, but something must be going on if he's flinging around hellfire all of a sudden."

"_Hastur_?" Crowley growled out. "_Ohfuckohfuckohfuck,"_ he let out a long groan, and then quieter as he spoke away from the phone. "You should warn me if you're going to do that… No, it's Adam. We have to go to Oxford. No…. No… of course not! I have to run Hastur over with my car again… No… Yeah… Well, he's the Antichrist; he isn't helpless… Go ahead. A few minutes won't make a difference." Then, louder as he spoke into the phone again, "We'll be there as soon as we can."

"Put. Clothes. On. Now." Adam growled. "I'm not fucking around here."

"All right. All right. We're coming."

"That better not be a euphemism," Adam said and ended the call.

"Adam?" Marcia asked in a quiet voice. "Who was that?"

"My godfather."

"Was he…?"

"When is he _not?_" Adam grumbled. He was too irritated right now to even feel his usual contact embarrassment. "I've just decided that I don't even care anymore."

"Oh," Marcia said. "Do you think that you could drive a bit slower?"

"Not right now, no," Adam said, as he blew past a traffic signal. "If you let me take you out to dinner this weekend, I'll drive as slow as you want. To dinner, I mean. Not right now. If I slow down right now, then I'll probably be stuck in Hell for the weekend."

"I… dinner?" Marcia asked. Her eyes were wide, and she never took them off the road ahead of them.

"Yeah, anywhere you want to go."

"Like a date?"

Adam shrugged, suddenly feeling a bit nervous as his manic hellfire-induced bravado left him. "Sure. Yeah. You know,… if that's something you'd be interested in?"

He pulled the car abruptly to a halt, using a handbrake turn to skid into a parallel parking space in front of Marcia's block of flats.

Marcia let out a long, relieved, breath, as she loosened her death grip on her books and reached for the door handle. "Okay," she said, before she stepped out of the car. "You can pick me up here at seven on Saturday." She paused for a moment. "Your Citroen would be fine," she added then, and shut the door.

Adam watched her as she made her way, somewhat shakily, toward her building.

oOoOoOo

"What do you think this is all about?" Aziraphale asked, getting into the Bentley.

"I don't care," Crowley growled as he slammed his door closed. "I'm doing the job for good this time. If that little skid mark hurts Adam he's going to wish he'd never even heard of The Antichrist."

Crowley started the car, and sped out onto the street.

"_When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Speaking words of wisdom, let it be_," came softly from the non-existent speakers.

Crowley scowled at the dash at the same time he stomped down on the clutch pedal and reached over to shift into second gear.

Unfortunately, in the absence of any clutch pedal, his foot found the break instead, and his hand grasped at empty air. The Bentley came to a shuddering stop in the middle of the road, and Crowley let out a colorful stream of invectives that started with, "Christ on a camel," and ended somewhere in the vicinity of, "if Walter Owen Bentley had wanted a fucking automatic transmission, he would have invented the blasted automatic transmission, and then he would have smashed the blessed thing into a thousand tiny little pieces after he filed the thrice-damned plans with the patent office, so that no one could ever inflict their idiotic idea of progress on an innocent, unsuspecting, internal combustion engine ever again! If I wanted my car to shift itself, I'd ask, and I wouldn't have bothered with manifesting two hands!"

Aziraphale let out a long sigh and flicked a hand at where the gearshift had been for the last century. It reappeared with a little 'pop', and Crowley closed his mouth on another tirade. He turned to look at Aziraphale with his heart in his eyes.

"Little mechanical miracle of my own," Aziraphale said, offhandedly, but with a knowing smile. "Now drive."

Crowley started the engine again.

"_And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me__. __Speaking words of wisdom, let it be_," sang Paul McCartney.

"One more thing," Crowley said, and snapped his fingers.

The volume slowly rose, as Brian May's guitar rocked out the opening to _Hammer To Fall,_ and Freddie Mercury sang out, "_Here we stand, or here we fall! History won't care at all! Make the bed, light the light! Lady Mercy won't be home tonight!_" and the Bentley chewed up the roads between London and Oxford and spat them back out the tailpipe into the startled windscreens of the conservative, compact, commuter cars it left in the dust- breathing in the Bentley's exhaust through their intake manifolds.

oOoOoOo

Adam found Yeshua sprawled out on the couch watching _Tin Tin_. He couldn't help but notice the vast difference in basic housekeeping between the two guests that he'd played host to over the last week. While Azazel had cleaned up after both himself and Adam, Yeshua had left a pile of dirty laundry in a heap on the armchair, and amassed a collection of used food and beverage containers on the treatable. But there would be time to muse over the relative merits of pornography over cartoons, as it pertained to cleanliness and good manners later.

"We have to go," Adam said, grabbing Yeshua's hoodie from the top of the pile on the chair to throw it at him. "Hastur is here, and he just set me on fire. Crowley and Aziraphale are going to meet us at the museum."

"Who is Hastur?" Yeshua asked, pulling the sweatshirt on over his head.

"My dad's favorite lackey."

"So, he's like a junior accountant or something?" Yeshua asked, completely serious in his confusion.

"Bless you," Adam said, laughing. "But, I did mean Lucifer, this once. Hastur is one of the more stupid and less pleasant Dukes of Hell, and he just tried to set me on fire."

Yeshua frowned. "But you're the Antichrist."

"I'd noticed."

"Why would a demon be trying to attack you?"

"No idea," Adam said. "I'm going to let Crowley deal with it. They have a grudge from way back, and Hastur is violating the… _rules of faerie_ by even being here."

"The _what_?"

"No angels or demons on Earth, save by invitation." Adam gave a cruel laugh. "Crowley is going to run him over with the Bentley again, and I want to watch this time."

"There must be some kind of misunderstanding," Yeshua said. "I'm sure if you just _talked_ to Lucifer, you could sort it out."

"I have classes this afternoon."

oOoOoOo

Azazel yawned, and pulled on Lucifer's arm to look at his watch.

Now that Crowley was gone, Lucifer was the only denizen of Hell who wore a watch. It wasn't as fancy as Crowley's. It only told the time in one location, and that location was wherever Adam happened to be. Lucifer didn't understand time zones of course; he just expected the time on Earth to be whatever time Adam thought it was, so that was what his watch told him. It also had a little date marker on one side, and another window that told him where Adam was at any given moment.

Right now, it read 19/05/31, MON, 12:16, OXFORD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.

Azazel frowned at it, and did some mental calculations. "I've been gone nearly four days."

Lucifer made a sleepy, interrogatory, sound.

"I didn't even tell Adam that I was coming back down. I'd better go up now. I still need to talk to him about everything anyway. I'll stick around until the Christ goes back to Heaven, so I can keep an eye on things. Maybe I can get Adam to come down to stay for the weekend. We have a whole library. I'm sure there are all kinds of dinosaur scientists in Hell. There's no reason he can't study here."

The meaning behind Azazel's words slowly filtered its way into Lucifer's consciousness, and he reached out an arm to pull Azazel back into bed. "Don't worry about it. I sent Hastur to fetch them a few hours ago."

"You did what?" Azazel asked, pulling away.

"I want a chance to talk to Adam first. He's either going to be mad that we told him at all, or mad that we didn't tell him sooner. I just thought that if I talked to him first, he could be mad at me instead. You know how he is, and he seems to like you. No need to change that."

Azazel was smiling at him now, and Lucifer allowed himself to bask in the warmth of that smile. "Plus, I figure if he could nab the Christ while he's at it," he continued. "It's aces all around."

Azazel's smile turned into a frown. "What _exactly _did you tell Hastur to do?"

"I just said that I wanted to talk to Adam, so he should go up to Earth and get him. If he happened to find the Christ while he was there and bring both of them, I made it clear that there was a commendation in it for him."

"So, you didn't tell him to kidnap our son then?" Azazel clarified.

"No, of course not, I…" Lucifer trailed off as he ran his whole conversation with Hastur over in his head. "No. He wouldn't have thought that I meant…" His frown deepened. "Maybe you should go up," he said uncertainly, "just to be sure. Sometimes Hastur gets carried away. I'm sure Adam's fine, but it wouldn't hurt to have a second set of wings in the air."


	21. Chapter 21

"So, what is it about this stuff that you find so interesting exactly?" Yeshua asked, as they wandered around the lobby of the museum, waiting for Aziraphale and Crowley.

Adam looked at Eustreptospondylus Oxonienis behind its glass case. "There have been five mass extinctions," Adam said. "Five Armageddons, before you or I ever walked this Earth. Why? Where did they go wrong that we didn't? How long do we have before we make number six, if it isn't me pushing the big red button? The data is all there in bits and pieces, buried in the Earth. God says it's a joke. Maybe it is, but it's also the greatest treasure hunt humankind has ever known. Better than all the pirate treasure that Robert Louis Stevenson could ever imagine, and more of a mystery than anything Sherlock Holmes ever encountered." Adam smiled. "I guess there are worse ways to spend a life than uncovering all the hidden lines and double meanings behind an elaborate joke. If it is a joke, it's the most convoluted one ever told. The Buddhists call life the great cosmic joke. Maybe paleontology is part of the punch line, and maybe it isn't. Either way, the fun part is looking for the answers, not knowing them."

Yeshua's gaze was drawn to the replica skeletons of the larger dinosaurs. "They are pretty cool, I guess. Don't get me wrong, you're completely cracked in the head when it comes to dinosaurs, but I suppose there are worse things you could be doing with your time on Earth."

"Destroying it, for instance?" Adam asked with a brow raise.

"I think that would make the top of the list, yeah."

"If Grandma wants an extinction, She's going to have to do her own dirty work. And, if Lucifer wants me in Hell, he'll have to do his victory dance over my dead body."

Perhaps Adam should have found some wood to knock on, because at moment, the wide front doors of the museum burst open in a blast of hellfire.

The lobby of the museum was full of patrons at this time of the day, and the explosion started a complete panic as people screamed and ran deeper into the museum, away from the blast, and towards whatever emergency exits they could find. The stench of sulfur was thick in the air, as Hastur stepped out of the fire.

Yeshua and Adam stood alone before him—the one fixed point in a sea of chaos.

"Aren't the two of you nice and cozy?" Hastur said.

oOoOoOo

"This place is a damned maze," Crowley growled, as the Bentley screeched around another corner, scattering grad students like pigeons.

"If you'd slow down, maybe I could read the signs."

"I thought that angelic reading speed you're always boasting about might actually be useful for once."

"It doesn't help when everything just blurs by. The books don't usually move when I'm reading them. Doesn't that gadget of yours come equipped with a global positioning system?"

"Yeah, here," Crowley dug his mobile out of his pocket and tossed it at Aziraphale, who handled it like a live grenade.

"I don't know how to use this."

"Figure it out. Human four-year-olds can do it. Put that massive intellect of yours to work. Just find the maps app, open it, hit the little microphone button and say natural history museum. It will do the rest."

Aziraphale tapped a finger tentatively at the screen. "How do you turn it on?"

oOoOoOo

Adam and Yeshua were crouched behind the Eustreptospondylus's display case, as fire licked up from the floor and started to crack the glass.

"What the Hell, Hastur," Adam shouted. "What is this all about?"

"I've been wanting to do this for a long time," Hastur said, shooting another fireball at the display case. "The Prince of Darkness wants the Christ, and I guess he's finally tired of _your _insolence. Hand him over, and I'll bring you to your father, or continue to harbor him, and I'll burn you to the ground and let Death bring you to Hell."

Adam stood up then, and walked out from behind the display case. Yeshua shot him a worried look, but Adam waved him off.

"Did you forget who I am, Hastur? Don't presume to command me. I am the Antichrist. I do not take orders from some lackey from the Sixth Circle. Now, if you know what's good for you, go back to Hell, and tell Lucifer that he may _call_ me, this evening, if he wishes to speak to me." Adam raised a hand and flicked it out at Hastur.

Nothing happened.

Hastur laughed, and gave him a condescending grin. "You can't stand with the angels and expect to use hellfire." He held one arm out and twirled, like he was doing a weight throw in the highland games, launching another blast of fire at Adam.

Adam dove for the cover of the display case, but he didn't make it in time. The fire licked up his right leg, burning away his jeans to tattered and charred ash from ankle to hip, and leaving behind blistered skin.

"_God's tits_, that hurts," Adam moaned.

Yeshua pursed his lips in disapproval at Adam's colorful curse, but he set one hand gently against the Antichrist's blistered skin, and closed his eyes. The blisters melted away, leaving behind pink, undamaged, skin.

"You've really pissed him off now," Yeshua said, just as another blast of hellfire hit against the display case.

This time the glass shattered into jagged shards and hot, molten, balls, of melted glass. They rained down on their heads and shoulders, as Adam and Yeshua threw up their arms to shield their faces and crouched behind the scant shield of the display case's base. There was a loud crack and a clatter, as the articulated skeleton of the Eustreptospondylus fell to pieces. One fossilized femur bounced off of Adam's shoulder to land in his lap.

Adam looked down at it in wonder as he held it in his hands, running fingers over the surface. He had been studying the Eustreptospondylus, behind it protective glass, and imagining what its life might have been like, for the last five years. He'd read a hundred scientific papers, and done more than a few research projects on this particular dinosaur. It was the only one of its kind ever found. And the location of that find, only a few kilometres from the university itself, had made it of special interest. He knew everything there was to know about Eustreptospondylus—at least everything that had been discovered or extrapolated so far. But, he had only ever dared to dream that he might one day touch even a single bone.

While Adam stared down at it, Yeshua risked coming out of cover long enough to look over his shoulder to Hastur.

"What now?" Yeshua asked.

"Now he's damaging the exhibits and I'm _really _angry," Adam said. He handed the bone to Yeshua. "Remember Lazarus?" he asked with a growl.

oOoOoOo

Aziraphale still hadn't managed to catch up to the 21st Century, when Crowley cut the corner around University Park and caught sight of a billow of yellow smoke. He flattened the accelerator to the floor. The Bentley fishtailed as it straightened and picked up speed, and in an instant they were flying past a crowd of fleeing museum patrons, as Crowley left ruts in the damp sod of the wide front lawn of the museum, and came to a stop in front of the blown-wide wreckage of the double doors beneath the building's central spire.

"I think we might be too late," Aziraphale said. "This looks serious."

"Hold onto your bowtie, angel," Crowley said, as he pushed up the sleeves of his shirt and gripped the steering wheel tightly.

"Do you really have to?" Aziraphale started, but that was as far as he got before he was thrown back into his seat by the force of the Bentley's acceleration.

Crowley grinned like a madman as rock royalty started up the first few, eminently recognizable, beats of _Another one Bites the Dust._

oOoOoOo

Azazel dropped from the sky like a descending hawk, and landed on one knee, with his glistening black wings thrown wide, just in time to put an arm up to shield himself from a shattered piece of oak door that was thrown back by the Bentley's grand entrance through the museum's front doors.

His face was a blank mask of barely suppressed, vengeful, rage, as he straightened up and strode through the smoldering wreckage.

His wings bobbed menacingly behind him with each purposeful step.

oOoOoOo

Yeshua looked at the fossilized skeleton skeptically. "How sure are you that you're right? It won't work if you're wrong."

Adam sucked in a deep breath, and nodded firmly, as though to reassure himself. "I'm sure." He smiled at Yeshua and added. "Leap of faith, right?"

"If you say so," Yeshua said. He handed the Eustreptospondylus bone to Adam, and shook his hands out, cracking his neck to both sides. "I'm going for the big one," he said, reaching both arms out to the Tyrannosaurus Rex, with divine purpose. "Rip him open like a lawyer on a toilet."

"Not _that _one," Adam hissed. "Haven't you been listening to a word I've said, you stubborn arse? That one is a replica; it's made of resin." He grabbed Yeshua's chin and forced his attention back to the pile of fossilized bones that had been the fully articulated skeleton of a dinosaur, before Hastur had come along. "_This_ one. This one is real."

"You're sure? It won't be as impressive."

Adam slapped the femur back into Yeshua's hands. "I'm sure. And, trust me; our little Eustreptospondylus here is plenty impressive on its own."

As Yeshua began to work one of his more famous miracles, Adam rose slowly to his feet. He walked deliberately back out into the open space of the lobby. His nostrils flared at the stench of sulfur and brimstone in the air. His jaw was clenched in determination, features drawn tight with coiled outrage, as he walked slowly and purposefully- the tattered remnants of his trouser leg fluttering around his undamaged right thigh. He had, perhaps, never looked more like his father than he did in that moment, and Hastur froze with one arm half-raised at the sight of the approaching figure of his master's son.

Adam's eyes were as cold as his voice, as he addressed the demon.

"You're wrong, Hastur," he said. "I'm not on the side of the angels, and all the demons in Hell can stay there and rot in their own filth for all eternity, for all I care." There was a gleam of white teeth at one corner of his mouth as his lips quirked into a cruel smile. "I'm on the side of the fairies, and Earth has a few secrets that all the angels in Heaven, and all the demons in Hell, are too _stupid_ to understand."

"You arrogant little brat," Hastur said, raising his arm to fling another ball of hellfire.

Just at that moment, there was a sound like an angry duck, and Adam fell to the ground, as two-hundred kilograms of very confused theropod, leapt over him, and landed in a crouch in the open space of the lobby between Hastur and Adam.

The razor-edged tip of the dinosaur's tail ruffled Adam's hair, as it whipped it back and forth to gain its balance. Its scales were dappled, green and gold. A crest of coppery-red feathers sprouted out from the crown of its head and down its back.

It was the most beautiful thing Adam had ever seen.

The dinosaur let out angry, "Eeerrrk," stretching its jaws wide, sounding the way Albert the emotional support rooster might, if he were five metres long, and roughly the size of a car.

"What the-" Hastur started, frozen in shock with his eyes wide, but then his paralysis broke, and he turned and ran. It was a mistake. He should have known that. After an eternity of working with demons, he should have learned that you _never _run from a predator.

The Eustreptospondylus had died more than 162 million years ago, and it didn't know what to make of this new world that it had found itself in, but there was one thing it did know. Deep down in the lobes of its prehistoric cerebellum, it had the finely honed instinct of a carnivore, and there was one thing it understood above all else: anything that was running away was dinner. It had been a _very_ long time since it had tasted fresh meat, and it was _hungry_.

It was only a matter of a few long strides for the dinosaur to close the distance between itself and Hastur. Adam watched in awe as the sinuous muscles flexed beneath its scales. It was the easy gait of a practiced predator- natures perfect killing machine, poetry in motion.

It moved almost too fast to see, as it snapped its head forward and clamped the demon between its jaws, nearly lifting him into the air. Hastur let out his final death cry in a gut-churning scream, as blood dripped down from each of the places where the dinosaur's teeth had punctured through his flesh, and it snapped its head back and forth, cracking his spine.

Adam raised a hand to his mouth, unconsciously, and was taking a step back, as the dinosaur ripped away a bleeding, football-sized, chunk of Hastur, when there was a deafening crash.

The lobby desk exploded into a hail of splintered wood, and _The Best of Queen_ echoed out through the museum, as a black, 1926, Bentley crashed into the body of a 126 million-year-old, carnivorous, theropod.

There was the meaty, cracking, sound of breaking bones and battered flesh, and the crunch of crumpling metal, as car impacted with dinosaur, and the Eustreptospondylus cried out in pain as it was knocked onto its side. It struggled for a moment to try to gain its feet, and then lay still, whimpering.

The silence hadn't yet settled over the chaos, when it was broken again by flapping wings, as Azazel barely cleared car and dinosaur. He didn't give either more than a passing glance as he landed, in a run, on the other side.

Adam barely had time to draw a breath, before he was grabbed and clutched tight against a firm, muscular, chest—the soft, brush, of dark feathers coming around to wrap him in a protective cocoon.

"Are you okay?" Azazel asked, holding Adam tight and pressing the side of his face into the top of Adam's head.

At the same time, Adam heard Crowley's voice, muffled through the barrier of Azazel's wings, but full of outraged disbelief, "Is that a bloody dinosaur?"


	22. Chapter 22

"Do you think that's something we should be worried about?" Aziraphale asked, looking to the mass of black feathers surrounding Adam with some concern.

Crowley had taken enough time to dispel the little patches of hellfire burning through the museum, but after that he had only had eyes for the Bentley, and didn't seem to care about anything else that was going on around him. Even the dinosaur was beneath his notice, save for how it pertained to the damages to the car.

"_That?" _Crowley growled. "What about the Bentley? We just hit a bloody dinosaur."

_Bloody is too right_, Aziraphale thought as he looked down at the poor creature, still shuddering with pain and thrashing about in a vain effort to get away—despite its broken legs.

"Your car can be fixed and the dinosaur can be… _granted mercy_. I'm more concerned about what's going on between Adam and Azazel at the moment."

Crowley flicked a glance at them, over the rims of his sunglasses, and then bent back to inspect the damage to the car. "I expect they're having a _family moment._" He lifted one broken headlight, barely hanging on by a frayed bit of electrical wire. "Leave them be, and help me fix this."

oOoOoOo

"Um, Azazel?" Adam asked. "Would you mind letting me go?"

"Yes."

"You're still holding on," Adam pointed out after a moment.

"Yes, I'd mind."

"This is getting weird."

"I saw the fire and I was so scared."

"Uh… okay…"

"As soon as I get my hands on Hastur, I'm going to rip him apart, and then I'm going to do it again, and then I'm going to get creative," Azazel growled, still holding Adam a bit too tightly.

"Yeah… okay then. Thanks. It's just getting a bit difficult to breathe."

"Shhh," Azazel said, petting his hair.

"No, really. Just." Adam pushed away from him, but was still encompassed within the circle of his wings. "What's going on?"

"Your father wanted to talk to you before I did," Azazel said. "Hastur has been unmanageable since Ligur was destroyed , and he's been spoiling for a fight since Armageddon was canceled. Lucifer should have known better than to send him. As soon as I heard how vague Lucifer was with his instructions, I suspected the worst. Deliberately misinterpreting unspecific orders has always been Hastur's strong suit. I'm glad you're okay."

"So Lucifer didn't actually want to kill me?" Adam asked, sounding not entirely as though he believed it.

"No." Azazel shook his head vehemently. "Of course not. He loves you."

Adam snorted.

"He _does_. We both do. You're our son. How could we not?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "That's nice and all, Azazel, but it doesn't work like that."

Azazel firmed his jaw and pulled Adam tightly back into the hug. "I don't care if it isn't sperm and eggs. You might be _his_ spirit, but I gave you form. You're as much mine as you are his, and I love you. You're _our_ son, and we love you, whether you want to believe it or not."

Adam stiffened in his arms. "What _exactly _do you mean, _gave me form_?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

The dinosaur made a high mournful cry from beyond the shield of Azazel's wings, and Adam grimaced.

"It's going to have to wait."

oOoOoOo

Crowley looked up when the dinosaur started screeching again, just in time to see Yeshua approaching it with his arms stretched out in front of him. "Jesus Christ! Stay away from the bleeding dinosaur!"

Yeshua froze, but Adam paid no attention to Crowley's warning, as he rushed past, barely staying out of range of the teeth that snapped out at him, and fell to his knees beside one of the animal's shattered legs.

"Shhhh," Adam said to the struggling dinosaur. "Hush, now. _**Go to sleep**_."

The dinosaur immediately stopped moving, and slowly lowered its head to the floor. Its eyes fluttered a few tines and fell closed. Its chest continued to rise and fall in a slow rhythm.

"Okay," Adam said, letting out a relieved sigh. "Now, get over here, and help me, Yeshua."

"Oi," Crowley said, abandoning his ministrations to the injured car, as Yeshua joined Adam. "What are you going to do? You'd better not be planning on healing that thing. It'll eat all of us."

"He does have a point," Aziraphale said, approaching carefully, but remaining well beyond the reach of any of the dinosaur's extremities. "But, we have to do something. We can't just leave it in misery, and we can't leave it here for the human authorities to find. Where did it even come from?"

"Some workers found it in a brick pit, a few miles north of here, in 1870, as I've mentioned, _multiple times,_" Adam muttered. "_Honestly_, I say the word _dinosaur _and suddenly I'm talking to myself."

"I'm more interested in why it was alive and standing in front of my car," Crowley gritted out between clenched teeth.

"I resurrected it," Yeshua said. At Crowley's scowl, he was quick to add, "It was Adam's idea."

"Which _worked_," Adam said. "So, the next person that says fossils are a joke, is getting fed to the dinosaur."

"And what exactly are we going to _do_ about the dinosaur?" Crowley asked "Can you two turn it back into fossils?"

"We're not going to kill it," Adam said. "It's been dead for millions of years. We're not going to kill it, after bringing it back to life just so that it could eat Hastur, and then you hit it with your car."

"It would be a kindness," Aziraphale said softly. "It doesn't belong here, Adam."

"We _aren't _killing it," Adam said again. "Yeshua is going to heal it, I'll keep it asleep, and then we'll… figure something out."

Azazel took a step forward, looking first from the injured dinosaur, and then to the grisly remains of what was left of Hastur. "I have a suggestion."

oOoOoOo

Adam's heart was hammering in his chest. It had been a weird day, and Hastur trying to kill him hadn't even been the half of it.

From what Azazel had said, he was pretty sure that he'd figured out the mystery of who The-Virgin-Mary-of-the-Apocalypse was, and even thinking about Azazel and the word 'virgin' in the same sentence was probably the most ridiculous thing about that whole situation.

He couldn't even be bothered to try to decide how he felt about the increasing oddity of his family situation, because he was touching a _living_, fucking, dinosaur. He could feel the edges of its reptilian brain in the periphery of his own consciousness, as it struggled against his control.

And, if anyone was having a weirder day that Adam, it was poor old Eustreptospondylus.

"Hey, now," he said quietly. "I can completely sympathize with you, mate, but I need you to stay asleep for now. It's all going to be all right. Hush. You're so magnificent."

And, it was. Adam could hardly take his eyes away from it. Part of him wanted to run blood tests, and take skin samples, photograph the teeth and the feathered crest, take measurements and temperature readings and audio recordings of its vocalizations. Another part of him wanted to get it as far away from the university as possible so that no one could do any of those things, because it didn't deserve to be poked and prodded by scientists. It deserved to roam free in a forest somewhere. It deserved to have a chance to finish growing into an adult- to hunt, and feed, and live its life the way it wanted to.

He also kind of wanted to plop it down in front of God and, like a metropolitan police detective that had just found the cannabis in your coat pocket, say '_and, what do we have here, then_?'

"Are you almost finished, Yeshua?" he asked. "I don't know how much longer I can keep him sleeping."

"It's a him?" Aziraphale asked.

"Educated guess," Adam said. "I'm guessing that the feathered crest is a mating display, like with birds, but we've only ever found this one, and it's a juvenile. The sexual anatomy is internal, so without doing a few tests, I can't be sure."

"Who cares if it's a boy or a girl dinosaur? Let's just get it out of here," Crowley said.

"I'm almost finished," Adam said. "If you'd all just shut up, for once, I could concentrate. This isn't like healing a human."

They all fell silent, watching as the last of the damaged flesh knitted together, and new scales formed to cover the skin.

Yeshua stood and brushed his hands over the legs of his trousers. "I think that should do it."

Azazel let out a sudden laugh and everyone turned to look at him. He shook his head, silver curls bouncing, as he wiped a few tears of mirth from his eyes. "I was just thinking about how I was going to explain this all to Lucifer."

"Blame me," Adam said. "He always blames me for everything anyway."

Azazel closed his eyes and shook his head, making a sound somewhere between an exasperated sigh and another laugh. "The two of you are _way_ too alike for your own good. Come home… to Hell. Just for the weekend. We all need to sit down and have a _long_ discussion."

"Yeah, okay," Adam started to agree, but he stopped and shook his head. "No, I just remembered, I have a date on Saturday."

"A date?" Azazel asked with obvious interest.

"Yeah, I…" Adam decided that providing any details about potential, future, romantic relationships to anyone currently present was a very bad idea, and wisely didn't elaborate further. "I'll come down on Sunday though, okay?"

"We'll be expecting you." Azazel smiled. "I'll make a pot-roast." He turned his attention from Adam to the sleeping Eustreptospondylus, and laid one hand over the dinosaur's back.

Demon and dinosaur both disappeared at nearly the same instant that Gabriel popped into existence a few steps to their right.

Gabriel blinked a few times at the empty space, and then pointed at it and looked at them all accusingly. "What was that?"

"Eustreptospondylus Oxonienis," Adam said, and _apparently_ my mother."

Gabriel's face scrunched into a confused scowl, and he spun around with his arms out, gesturing to the destruction of the museum's lobby. "And all this?" His eyes focused on Aziraphale. "God sent me down here because there was a demon throwing hellfire at Her son. You were supposed to be keeping an eye on him. You were supposed to be making sure that he kept a low profile, didn't make any waves. _These_ are waves, Aziraphale. _This _is a fucking tsunami."

"The demon has been handled," Aziraphale said. "We were just cleaning up. And, we were doing a favor, at God's _request_. I don't take my orders from you anymore, Gabriel. Don't talk to me like I'm under review."

Gabriel's scowl deepened. "You might be beyond my power, but you aren't beyond Hers. Don't presume too much."

He turned to face Yeshua, and the scowl was replaced with a big, fake, salesman's grin. "In light of recent events, we're going to have to cut your visit a little short. We'll just," he swept an arm across the room. The shattered fragments of the busted lobby desk flew back together, the puddles and smears of dinosaur blood on the floor evaporated, the scorch marks disappeared from the walls and ceiling, and Eustreptospondylus Oxonienis's display case reformed from the shattered and melted pile of glass—minus its former occupant.

Gabriel smiled. "That should do it. Now, if you'll just come with me, Yeshua. I'll take you home. Your Father is waiting for you."

Yeshua looked very uncertain, but his tone was firm as he said. "I'm not going."

"Excuse me?" Gabriel asked.

"I said that I'm not going. And, I'm staying longer than was originally planned. Crowley has asked me to be the best man in his wedding, and I'll need to be around to help out with that."

"Your Father wants you back in Heaven, now," Gabriel said, as though that should be the obvious end of the conversation.

"My Father knows where to find me," Yeshua said. "And, He's more than capable of contacting me Himself. I'd tell you to pass along my plans, but we both know that isn't necessary."

Gabriel gaped at him.

"You should go back to Heaven now, Gabe. I know how much you hate being _on the ground floor_."

"This is…" Gabriel sputtered, "_Highly unprofessional_."

Yeshua shrugged. "I apologize for the inconvenience."

Gabriel turned his gaze on Crowley, narrowing his eyes. "Your _wedding?"_

Aziraphale held up his hand to show Gabriel his ring, smiling the happy smile of the newly engaged as Crowley took a step closer to him and wrapped an arm around his angel.

Gabriel's face morphed into an utterly disgusted expression, and he muttered something about exchanging bodily fluids and sullying celestial temples.

Aziraphale just smiled at him. "I'll take that as your most heartfelt congratulations."

"If you want to fornicate with _demons_, it's all the same to me," Gabriel said, brushing imaginary dust from his lapel.

"He isn't a demon, but the fornication is very enjoyable. You should try it sometime."

The horrified look on Gabriel's face made it instantly onto the list of Aziraphale's all time favorite expressions —alongside the one Crowley had worn upon learning that Aziraphale had given his holy sword to the humans, and the one he'd made just after their first kiss, and really any look that had ever crossed Crowley's face was infinitely better than looking at Gabriel, but still it was entertaining to watch him flounder.

"Yeshua," Gabriel turned back to the Christ, a wheedling tone in his voice. "Stop this nonsense at once, and come with me."

"It isn't nonsense, and I already told you that I'm not going anywhere."

"This isn't optional."

"He said, no." Adam took a step toward Gabriel- full of the righteous anger of someone who'd had his own freewill argued against more times than he could count. "Either, try to make him, and see how well that goes for you, or leave."

Gabriel huffed indignantly, straightened his jacket, and was gone.

Yeshua let out the breath he'd been holding and covered his face with his hands. "I'm going to be in so much trouble," he whimpered.

Adam slapped him on the shoulder. "I'm proud of you. Might have taken you a couple thousand years, but learning how to say no to your parents is the first step on the road to independence."

"I'm more worried about saying no to God being the first step on the road to Hell."

Adam shrugged "My suite has a couch; you're welcome to it. Though, if you're staying on Earth for a while, you should probably look for your own flat."

"You can have my place in Mayfair when you've finished fixing the bookshop," Crowley offered.

"If you weren't too busy to take calls, you'd know that we finished last night," Adam told him.

"You did?" Aziraphale had never looked so relieved.

"Yeah," Adam said. "I think you'll like it even—in a few decades when you get used to the changes."

Aziraphale's look of relief turned to one of trepidation, but before he could start grilling them about exactly what had been done to his precious bookshop, Crowley cried out.

"That moron fixed the front desk with the Bentley on the wrong side."

"We could leave it here," Adam joked. "It's almost old enough to be an exhibit."

Before Crowley could start ranting about classic automobiles, Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the Bentley disappeared. "There, it's on the curb outside. Really, I know it's only been twelve years, and it's easy to forget, but we aren't reporting in to anyone anymore. You don't have to worry about justifying every little thing on your paperwork."

"Wasn't that, angel. It's the spirit of the thing. He did it on purpose, just to be an arse."

"We'll have to do something about the Eustreptospondylus skeleton too," Adam said, looking at the empty case. "They're going to notice that it's missing."

"I can take care of that," Crowley said. "I'm quite good at fossils. I'll have you a Eustreptowhatever whipped up in no time."

Adam didn't have any high hopes of the accuracy of this statement, and was resolving himself to the inevitable outcry from the scientific community when they discovered that one of the museum's most prized exhibits had been replaced by a poorly constructed forgery. He was, however, even more disconcerted by the possible implications, when Crowley promptly created a fossilized Eustreptospondylus Oxonienis skeleton that was completely indistinguishable from the original. Adam had a worrying hypothesis that carbon dating would place the skeleton at somewhere around 162 million years old, and he wasn't at all sure that he wanted to test the idea.


	23. Chapter 23

Aziraphale and Crowley returned to Soho, after parting ways with Adam and Yeshua.

They found a red ribbon and a small envelope tacked to the door of the bookshop, above the closed sign, and they exchanged a look before Aziraphale carefully detached the envelope like it might explode into glitter confetti, or something equally unpleasant, at any moment.

The note inside read, simply:

Congratulations on your engagement.

With love,

-Adam & Yeshua.

There was a little sketch of a halo with demon horns at the bottom.

They exchanged another look while Aziraphale fumbled with the keys, and they walked into the shop.

"Oh," Aziraphale said with a little gasp, as he took in the renovations. "This is really quite nice, actually. And, there are empty shelves."

He went over to one of them, and ran his hands along it. There was a shelf running the length of each of the walls, with another two freestanding islands of bookshelves in the middle- the ends of these rounded in an aesthetically pleasing curve with nooks for displays. Each of them had several smaller sliding shelves fixed to the front. The wood gleamed with a warm, rosy-gold finish. Despite how organized and professional the new shelving made the collection of books look, the furniture and table lamps had been arranged in the kind of haphazard, lived in, way that still made it feel cozy.

Aziraphale slid one of the shelf extensions on its rollers, and it moved effortlessly. "He might have asked permission first, but I suppose I can admit that Yeshua was right. This is an improvement." Whatever he might be admitting to, there was a begrudging tone in Aziraphale's voice.

"If he'd asked, you would have said no." Crowley pointed out. He walked along, browsing the shelves idly. "They've put all your cookbooks down here as well." He stopped short and picked up a book. "I'm pretty sure you didn't have any of these though."

Aziraphale came over. "No, I certainly did not."

"Outdated books of obsolete computer coding from the 80s? Agricultural statistics from the 17th century? _The Proper Usage of 69 Common Household Products."_ Crowley raised a brow at that knowingly. "Adam's idea of a joke?"

Aziraphale snorted and picked up one volume, showing it to Crowley. "_The History of the Domestication of the Bactrian Camel_. I'd say Yeshua was in on it as well."

Crowley attempted to slide the shelf to the side, but it was stuck fast, unmoving. "Not up to Yeshua's usual standards of construction either."

Aziraphale added his weight to the shelf, but it still didn't move. "I think the rollers are jammed."

Crowley gave a little wiggle of his fingers, and had to reach out an arm to keep Aziraphale from falling over, as the shelf abruptly slid free. Beneath was a solid wall Oscar Wilde—none of Aziraphale's special, inscribed, first editions, but all of the other printings and alternate covers, and volumes with added literary analysis.

Crowley snorted out a laugh when he saw it. "They gave you a special place to hide your porn stash. Looks like they know you well enough."

Aziraphale frowned at him. "My _porn stash_? I know that you slept through most of the 1800s, but have you ever actually read any of Oscar's works?"

"Oh yeah," Crowley dismissed. "Full of flowery prose, clever witticism, and thinly veiled homoerotic subtext. It might not be erotica, but if, after all this time, you think I don't know what gets your blood pumping, angel, _well_…" He waved a hand at the books. "I think all this speaks for itself."

A slight flush rose in Aziraphale's cheeks. "It took you six thousand years, the loss of our supernatural powers, and a kiss on the forehead to figure out what _gets my blood pumping_."

Crowley reached out and slid the bookshelf over again to cover the Wilde books. He reached up to lay a hand against Aziraphale's flushed cheek and quirked his lips up into a smirk. "Who says that persistence doesn't pay? Maybe if Oscar had had a few thousand more years, you'd be wearing _his_ ring on your finger."

Aziraphale looked down at his hand. "I think that maybe I was already taken—even if I wasn't ready to admit it."

Crowley leaned in and kissed the top of Aziraphale's head. "Want to go see what they did upstairs?" he asked, holding out his hand.

Aziraphale took it and allowed himself to be led up to their flat.

Their kitchen wasn't really a kitchen anymore. It looked more like a greenhouse with its own sink and refrigerator. Yeshua and Adam had made tiered shelving to hold and display all of Crowley's plants. Except, of course, Crowley's plants had all been destroyed, and these plants were… _strange_.

Crowley crouched in front of one, and scowled at it. He poked it with one finger and it wobbled a bit. "You're all spongey and you look like you're trying to compensate for something," he told it. "I don't know what kind of tree you think you're supposed to be, but you should know that we don't tolerate shedding leaves in this household, and _failure to thrive_ is unacceptable."

"Um, Crowley, dear," Aziraphale said, uncertainly. "I think our table is alive."

Crowley came over to inspect it, and sure enough their new dining table was actually a living into the floor was a special planter, and out of it grew a thick trunk of twining vines that rose up and matted together to support a round, glass, tabletop. The way that the vines had braided themselves together beneath the glass formed an image that almost looked like it had been carved from a solid piece of wood.

There was a familiar apple tree, and beneath its foliage, a certain demon held out an apple to a certain angel.

Aziraphale swiped his hand over the glass, lingering just above the image of the little vine-formed Crowley. "It's an interesting choice of decoration."

Crowley hummed. "I'd always wondered what might have happened if I'd tried tempting you with food a bit earlier. I think those apples were the only morsels in the garden that you didn't sample."

"Did Eve ever say what they tasted like?"

"Freedom."

oOoOoOo

On the day that he was supposed to have returned to Heaven, Yeshua bar Yoseph of Nazareth, Son of God, messiah to the people, and sometime journeyman carpenter, stood in the entryway of his new flat in Mayfair in the 21st Century.

He still had the keys that Crowley had given him clutched in his hand as he stood there frozen in place.

There was a statue.

It was two angels, and they were… _well_, they were doing _something_, but Yeshua didn't think it was wrestling.

He'd seen angels wrestle before. It was a favorite pastime in Heaven. Michael and Gabriel had a longstanding rivalry. But, their matches never looked like this. Nor had they ever made him feel quite the way that he did looking at Crowley's favorite sculpture.

oOoOoOo

Azazel and Lucifer stood on the edge of a rock face overlooking a new pocket of Hell. Despite its location off the Ninth Circle, the frozen and barren plane around the edge of the cliff gave way to verdant greenery and tall trees with patches of grassy plain below. Adam had dubbed the place Circle 9 ¾, for no reason that either of his parents could understand.

"If I had known that all I needed to do to get him to come here willingly was give him a dinosaur, I would have done it years ago," Lucifer commented.

"I think that a little honesty goes a long way, as well," Azazel said.

"I'm The Devil. I'm not supposed to be honest."

"You aren't supposed to be a lot of the things that you are. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to learn a thing or two from Adam- where it comes to being who you want to be, instead of who you're meant to be."

"And yet, Adam has created his own place in Hell. Even if it is just somewhere to keep his new pet, it's a step towards what he's meant to become."

"Maybe."

Azazel watched anxiously as the dinosaur, fresh from killing its third recorporated Hastur of the day, turned on Adam. He narrowly avoided the dinosaur's snapping teeth, ducking low around a rocky outcropping, as he threw up a hand. The dinosaur froze in place and dropped to the ground, and Azazel made a relieved sound.

"He's doing it in his own way though," Azazel continued. "I think we're going to be seeing a lot of changes around here, the more Adam starts to get involved."

Lucifer took Azazel's hand in his and brought it to his lips, brushing a kiss over the top of his knuckles. "A few changes might be a good thing."

"_Good_?"

Lucifer sighed, rolling his eyes. "Having you all to myself definitely isn't bad."

oOoOoOo

Below, Adam kept a wary eye on the Eustreptospondylus.

"All right, Dilly. Let's try this again."

He released his hold on the dinosaur, and it squawked and struggled up to its feet. It hopped forward, crouching low, and snapped its teeth. Clever, slitted, eyes darted back and forth, as it watched him.

"Just stay there," Adam said. "If you try to attack me, I'm just going to drop you again. We need to come to an understanding here."

Dilly sidled sideways, moving away from Adam and closer to the freshly killed demon.

"Good, good," Adam said in a calm voice. "If you're going to stay here you need to get used to being a Hasturivore. You can have all the demon that you want, but no biting the hand that feeds you."

The dinosaur darted another glance at him, and then bent to put its jaws around Hastur's still twitching arm. There was an unpleasantly wet sound as it tore off Hastur's hand and tilted its head up to swallow down the chunk of meat.

"Well, you know what I mean," Adam amended in the face of the obvious irony. "You have to be properly trained. Dad says I can only keep you if you're properly trained."


End file.
